Raven's Game
by Will-the-Tankadin
Summary: Raven finds a video game disk named Dark Fall. Since she's into dark things, she wants to try it when no one is looking. But, when her powers act up while she's holding the disk she gets sucked in! BBxRae near the end!
1. Game Start!

_Recently, I've played and solved a puzzle game from "The Adventure Company" called Dark Fall: The Journal. And, I thought it was so dark and morbid of a game, that even Raven might like it. **OO **So, I thought I might write this, and put a twist in it! What would happen if Raven were sucked into… Dark Fall? I don't own Teen Titans, or Dark Fall: The Journal. OH! Due to the fact that Dark Fall is a British game, I will tone it to where it takes place in Titan's Tower instead of that 700 year-old hotel, okay? That would make it easier to understand. Okay! Here we go! Part one will be a little longer than the rest, just to see if I can catch anyone's interest, okay? Grab your blankie 'cuz I'm gonna make it scary! Whoooo-! O0 Please enjoy:_

RAVEN'S GAME Part I: Game Start 

"Soul Caliber?" Beast Boy held up the game for Raven to see.

"No." She said, barely glancing from her book.

"Super Racer 5000?"

"No."

"_Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicals_!"

"_No_!" Raven said, her black aura flaring. The floor shook slightly in her brief relapse of control. Beast Boy shrieked like a little girl and hid behind the couch. Satisfied that she'd scared him away for the moment, she went back to her morbid novel.

BB had been trying for almost twenty minutes to get her to play a video game with him. Cyborg was busy in the garage working on his baby, the T-car. Robin was busy with a Slade lead, and Starfire… well… he didn't wanna ask her because she didn't seem to understand what they were for. Not that she was stupid or anything, just that she preferred _watching_ to playing. Gamestation was no fun with just one person, so he was _bored_. Video games were the only things that were fun on a rainy autumn day like it was.

Raven glanced up from her book to see him sit at the window-wall of the common room, pressing his face against the glass. "Why'd it have to rain _today_?" He groaned softly, pressing his forehead to the cool glass. His animal instincts bid him to run, play, swim… do _something_ outside before winter came along and stranded him inside the tower.

Coming to a good stopping place, Raven shut her book and stood to make herself some tea. Beast Boy watched since she was the only thing of interest in the room at the moment. She put up her hand and the cabinet jumped open. Her kettle, tae bags, spoon, mug, and coaster floated out. With a gentle flourish she had the coaster and the mug levitate to the table. Beast Boy watched as the faucet came on by itself, spewing water into the kettle. It steamed with hot water, then went to the stove as Raven grabbed the floating tea bags for herself. Shaking them only slightly to settle them, she made the kettle set itself on the stove.

There was a resounding ding-dong in the common room. Beast Boy was on his feet in an instant! "_The_ _mail's here_! That's _always_ fun!" He ran towards the double doors that led out of the common room. Raven rolled her eyes, sitting the lid on her kettle and waiting for the stove to heat up. "I bet there's a load of fan mail to me from all my adoring f–!" his voice had faded with distance. He came back a minute later with a hand full of mail. "Let's see…" He thumbed through the envelopes. "Robin… Robin… Cy's PC Monthly… Starfire… _ARCHIE COMIC_!" The green teen dropped the rest on the counter and ran to his room with his treasure. Raven stared at the doorway where he'd left through, then shrugged. The stove's hot plate was starting to turn orange, so it wouldn't be long now.

What to do while she waited……? Beast Boy had only flicked through half of the mail, maybe there was one addressed to her? Or one that said 'To the Titans?' Raven didn't get much fan mail, but she didn't have anything else to do at the moment, so why not look through and see? "Mmm…" she said neutrally when she saw the bright pink envelope addressed to Starfire. She flipped uncharacteristically through Cyborg's magazine, and then paused. There was a box on the bottom of the stack. Her brow furrowing, Raven pushed the rest of the mail aside. It was small, smaller than a DVD box, and really thin. Whatever was inside might've fit in an envelope, but… it was a cardboard box. Raven looked for an address… or an _addressee_. There was nothing written on it _anywhere_. Suspicious but still a little curious, she leaned against part of the counter and pulled at the edges. It wasn't addressed to any specific Titan… so why not open it… Raven's book-fed curiosity got the better of her, and she tore it open. She turned it upside down, expecting a letter…

But she got a CD. Raven blinked, pulling her hood back so she could see better. It was jet black on both sides, and the bottom was mirror-like. Raven saw herself with a look of mild curiosity, and she turned it over again. Spidery, dark words greeted her. Had they been there _before_? Raven cocked an eyebrow. Of course they'd been there. Her hand had probably just been covering them…. She turned the disk to see what it said. In big, bold silver, gothic letters… **DARK FALL** greeted her. Raven was helplessly interested by the title alone. Her gothic persona and attitude towards life projected her to see what it was. Checking her tea kettle again, still not shrieking with steam, she spotted Beast Boy's CD player on the counter.

Making sure no one else was present, she popped it open and stuck the CD inside. The machine spun the disk obediently, and she put the headphones up to one of her ears. She waited patiently, but got no sound out of it. She checked the volume, then looked at the digital display. 'NO CD' was all it said. The CD player couldn't read it.

So, it wasn't music. Raven knew that much. She took it out, a little disappointed. Maybe it was a _movie_? Having not seen a particularly scary movie in a while, she opened the DVD player and turned the TV on. Pushing the tray closed, she watched the little light-up display in the DVD player spin the little cartoon disk that was on the front. After a few moments, a slash appeared across the cartoon DVD disk. Raven frowned. It wasn't music… it wasn't a movie… "Oh no…" Raven muttered. "It's a _game_." Beast Boy would never let her hear the end of it if he came in and she was playing a _video game_! Raven took the disk back from the DVD player, looking at it. "Oh well." She muttered, dropping it amongst the stack of video games that Beast Boy had been bribing her with earlier. Raven returned to the counter, waiting for the slow steaming of the kettle to become a shriek so she could make her tea at last.

She drummed her fingers, bored, on the counter. Why did it seem to be taking so long today to make tea? Was the boredom of the rainy day in her too? Of course not. Raven shook her head, but spotted the dark disk, shining right at her, on the stack of games. Raven's mind was starting to get more and more curious. In the land called Nevermore, her emotions clustered in groups. They conspired about what to do about the dark disk, but none of them could reach a verdict.

Finally, Raven gave in to temptation. Putting her hood up she checked yet again to be sure no one was watching her, and approached the Gamestation. Picking up the black disk, she popped the system open and inserted it. Searching with untrained eyes, she finally found the power button. Tracing the chords with her eyes, she found the player one controller, and flipped the power on.

The screen went black, and she heard the disk spinning in the Gamestation. Raven frowned after a few long moments, the controller sitting limply in her hands. Nothing was happening. She deflated with genuine disappointment. The rain was getting way worse outside, beating against the wall-window of the common room. She tilted her head. The only thing that was left was a computer, and that meant going to Cyborg. Oh well. She didn't want to know what was on it _that_ badly. She reached and turned the Gamestation off, popping the receiver open. She reached and took the disk, its sleek black surface beckoning her to solve the mystery. _Mystery_? What _mystery_? Why had _that_ word come to mind? Raven shrugged. She heard her tea kettle beginning to whistle, and made to stand.

Lightning split the sky _right outside_, and thunder shook the tower! Raven was blinded and let out a startled yelp. Her powers slipped and ignited the disk. Raven was shrouded in black, and vanished with a cry into a vortex! When the lightning had gone, and the thunder was done rolling…… _Raven was gone_. All that remained in her place was the jet-black disk. It sparked with black energy, outlined in white. Then… silently… it picked itself up off the carpet about a half-inch… _and began to spin_.

The kettle shrieked loudly, having no one to attend to it. Thunder boomed outside again, but no one was around in the common room to hear it.

Beast Boy, who was in the middle of enjoying his comic, heard his stomach growl. "_Hungry_…" He murmured, dropping his comic face down so he'd know where he stopped. Humming to himself, he came to the kitchen. An unpleasant sound met his ears, forcing his hands to jump to them. "Hey _Raven_! Your kettle thing is making a lot of noise you know! I think the water is hot enough already!" He looked around, but saw no sign of the dark girl anywhere. He looked around in confusion. "…_Raven_? She wouldn't just leave… would she?" He tilted his head, turning the stove off and setting the kettle on a different burner so the stove wouldn't scorch the bottom. After a moment of thought, he shrugged. "Maybe she went off to meditate or something. She could've at least turned off the _stove_… _geez_…"

After helping himself to a peanut butter, pickle, banana, and jelly sandwich, Beast Boy was gone from the common room again. All was silent… aside from a soft whirring sound coming from a black disk, which had somehow made its way under the couch where no one would see it.

"_Uuuhn_…." Raven held her head, which ached. She felt as though she'd fallen from a very high place. She was in total darkness, and could sense no one nearby with her powers. "Where am I…?" She stood, gathering her body into the standing position without it parting her cloak. She liked doing that because it gave the illusion she was rising out of the floor. Doing illusions without magic was a pretty good talent, in her opinion. She didn't have to chance her emotions unbalancing if she didn't use her powers. She couldn't see anything… it was too dark, even for _her_ to see.

Suddenly she was blinded by a bright neon green sign! She staggered in surprise. She was briefly afraid her powers might break something… but there was nothing around for her to break. This fact made her shudder ever so slightly. _What kind of black void was she in_? She regained her posture, squinting at the sign.

NAME:

The little underscore was blinking. It was hovering at about face-level, word and all. Raven touched it, but she didn't feel anything. It was just light. There was no projector anywhere, either. It was simply hanging in the air. "Uh…… _Raven_?" she said.

NAME: Raven CONFIRM? Y/N 

It copied what she had said, asking if it was right. "Yes." She said, playing along for the moment. "What's going –?" She was plunged into darkness again. The neon letters had vanished, leaving her blind again. Raven knelt, feeling the floor. Was this Mad Mod's place, re-vamped or something? Raven extended her awareness thirty feet into the floor, and found nothing. _Literally_. Not even _dirt_. She sighed, starting to worry just a little. If it had been Mad Mod, she would've felt the machines of his illusionary school moving around. …Control Freak, maybe? No… he liked to gloat and be a dramatic idiot before zapping people into the TV… Raven couldn't think of who – A spotlight appeared and Raven whirled, hands blackened to attack!

It was… an _end table_. It was small and had, of all things, an answering machine on it. "If you're there pick up, Raven!" She knew the voice immiediatly. It was _Beast Boy_! "It's me, Beast Boy!" There was a pause. Raven wondered how she was supposed to pick up… _if there was no phone around._ "I needed you to answer……… I know what you're thinkin', though. 'He only calls when there's something wrong.'" Raven knew that was true, but was still suspicious of the message. She slowly approached the answering machine as the message went on. There was no phone to pick up _at all_, she noticed. "Well, something is wrong, dude. Very wrong. Like _Wicked Scary_ wrong." She knew Beast Boy only used the name of that movie when he was being dead serious. It was like a curse-word to him. She leaned over the answering machine, watching the two turners play the tape. "You gotta come help, Rae! Something's happened… something _bad_." She could hear his quick, panicked breathing. "You're all we've got left. You see, Cyborg and me were… this is kinda embarrassing… _ghost hunting_. We thought we heard something in the basement…" The was a pause, and an odd sound in the background. Beast Boy held his breath… tiny whispers went by in the background, and Raven actually heard him whimper. Then, they finally passed… he let out his held breath to continue speaking. Now he was whispering loudly, as though not to attract attention. "That was just the start……. I think whatever we were looking for found us. _All of us_. Except you. We turned it loose… we didn't _mean_ to! _Honest_!" Raven squinted, trying to understand. Since when was Beast Boy so serious? "Please help." He whispered earnestly, as though he were about to start crying. Raven wondered what on Earth was so bad… what had happened to the others? What had they turned loose? What the hell was with the _answering machine_, and why wasn't there a phone with it? "This all started a few days ago, Rae. It was whe…" Beast Boy paused again. The whispering had returned, louder than before. "_I can hear it_!" He whispered desperately. "_I can hear it! It's right outside my door! Whispering my name_! …_It knows my name, Raven_!" There was a short pause. "_I've got to open the door and face it……_ _I've gotta try and fight it before it drives me crazy_!" Beast Boy sounded as though he were inches from crying hysterically. "_It got the others, Rae. Please… **please**, help us._" Raven felt her eyebrows tilt upward. He sounded so… _desperate_ for her… But, his whispering continued for just a bit longer. "_I hope you get here in time Raven. I've_…_ I've gotta go now." _The whispering grew louder in the background, and Raven heard Beast Boy's footsteps going away from the phone.

"Don't do it…" Raven heard herself say softly. "Don't……" she heard, on the answering machine, the door of Beast Boy's room opening. There was a short silence, and the familiar whooshing sound of Beast Boy changing shape… suddenly thousands of whispers filled the air! _Hundreds of voices saying thousands of different things_! There was a grinding sound like…… like the breaking of flesh and bone. Then there was dead silence, and the message had ended. Raven let out a soft sigh of weariness. It had gotten Beast Boy. Whatever _IT_ was…

The end table faded from existence, taking the answering machine with it. Raven was left in total darkness.

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_Well, I don't know if anyone besides me has played Dark Fall: The Journal… but I'm giving it my best shot? Does anyone have any input for me? …Yes I KNOW I USE TOO MANY EXCLAMATION POINTS! MANY PEOPLE HAVE TOLD ME THIS! SO, YOU KNOW WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So there! Please review, and have a nice day! _


	2. Lussa

_**A few people have told me that this game DARK FALL: THE JOURNAL sounds interesting, and they wish to know more about the game itself. Well, I'll tell you a little about it during each chapter, okay? Now, first you'll wanna know what system its for. DARK FALL is for PC, or the computer, if you don't know the acronym PC. It is strictly a puzzle game, though. You can't die, and there are no enemies. But… that doesn't keep it from being scary as hell, trust me. The game itself can be found in Wal-mart, on the row of PC games that are like ten dollars or less. Yep. It's a cheapo game, but it's foreign, so it's not exactly brand-spanking new. It's from England, so be easy on it. But, just make sure you don't play it in the dark for too long… heh… I don't own Teen Titans.**_

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**RAVEN'S GAME**

Part 2: **_Lussa_**

Raven groaned, holding her head. She felt as though she were falling… falling in darkness with no hope of stopping. Her stomach was doing flip-flops and just as she was sure she would be ill she came to a jerking halt. "I'm… _home_?" she whispered. In front of her was, in fact, Titan's Tower. "Wait… something's wrong…" Raven said aloud. "It doesn't _feel_ right." She gently probed the letter-shaped building ahead of her, feeling for anything unusual. "Oh no…" Raven couldn't even say it. The building was completely dead. There were no life signs inside, the power was off… it was a dead cell.

She turned to look at Jump City, to see if it was the same there. Raven couldn't see past the mists of night. The heavy fog blocked the city from her view, and she sighed heavily. Turning back to the cold, dry building Raven pulled her hood up. She was going to have to do some investigating. Some dumb old building wasn't going to scare _her_. _She **lived** there_! She approached the huge double doors, reaching and touching them with one hand. She hissed a little, as though in pain, quickly drawing back. They were _cold_. Ice cold. Using her cloak as a buffer for the cold, Raven heaved against one of the doors. She grunted, pushing harder until –!

Both doors burst open, throwing her backward like a rag doll. Raven landed with a cry, quickly standing to face her attacker. But… there was no one there. It was dark beyond dark inside, and even Raven's eyes couldn't pierce the blackness. She quickly approached the doorway, peering inside. "Mmm…" she mumbled, unsure of herself.

Suddenly a massive, horrid screeching blasted out of the building! Raven cried out as her cloak, hood and hair were all blown back at the incredible sound. She braced hard against it, her hair flapping like a banner. It was colder than the doors had been. She squeezed her eyes shut, her arms over her face as though she were in a blizzard. She took a step forward and it only grew more horrible. The screeching became a hellish scream, a thousand people all at the same time. Raven's ears had never heard such a haunting sound, and she took another step as it only grew colder. Temperatures plummeted dangerously, and Raven threw herself past the threshold.

The screaming stopped. The wind stopped. The temperature went back up, and Raven lay there trembling. Was it from fear, or from the horrible cold? She breathed out steam one last time, sprawled in an odd position. Her cloak was bunched up around her, making it hard to even move. She rolled over to face upward, and forced herself to sit up. She held her head with one hand, massaging her temple. "That was definitely… _not normal_." She muttered. "Something is here… but _what_?"

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"Maybe she's just gone to her café for the day, Beast Boy." Robin said, barely looking up from his paper. Beast Boy had gotten bored with his comic, and had gone looking for someone to have fun with. And, as always, Raven was at the top of the list. Whether it was annoying her, trying to make her laugh, playing a prank on her, or just interrupting her meditation to see what she would do to him… it was always something fun to do.

Robin wasn't worried about Raven, but Beast Boy spoke up again. "But the last time I saw her, she was making tea!" he said, growing frustrated with Robin's lack of interest. "She wouldn't go out in a storm like _this_ to go do something she was doing here in the first place!" Beast Boy suddenly turned into a green dog, ready to track her down.

"Friends!" Starfire had entered the common room, looking a little worried. "Have you seen friend Raven? I had planned to join her for meditation today at the usual time, but… she is not in her room." Her usually happy face had wilted slightly, looking upset. Of course, Starfire's distress got Robin's attention.

"Well… if she's not in her room and she wouldn't go out in the storm, where would she be?" Robin asked, folding his newspaper. "She wouldn't just vanish without a word. Maybe Cyborg knows where she is…?" he stood, and the other two followed him to the garage.

As expected, Cyborg was under the T-car making minor repairs from their last car chase. "Hey ya'll." He said, seeing their feet approaching from where he lay. He was laying on a skateboard of sorts, and rolled out from under the car. "What's up?" He was holding a wrench in one hand and had a magnifying glass on one of his eyes.

"Have you seen Raven?" Robin asked. "She's not in her room, and we can't find her."

"Have you checked the roof?"

"It's raining, dude." Beast Boy said. Cyborg had been in the garage most of the day, so he hadn't gotten wind of the storm yet. "She meditates by the window in the living room when its storming, remember?"

"Oh yeah…" Cyborg said. "Hmm…" He sat up, grabbing a spare rag and getting a little bit of grease off of himself. "Well… what about the _basement_? Have you looked there? It's dark and scary, like her." Beast Boy shot him a glare for that one, but they moved as a group to go see if she was there.

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It didn't take long for Raven to realize that the tower was abandoned. There were pots and pans out in the kitchen area, and ingredients for one of Starfire's alien dishes were laying around. She had no idea what half of them were, but they all looked cold, stale, and _unusable_. She looked the refrigerator, but found the light didn't work. "Of course the power is out." Raven muttered. "Why _wouldn't_ it be?" she searched slowly through the living room, looking for any signs of recent activity. None.

The Gamestation that never stayed off enough to get cold looked as though it had been off for years. Raven inspected it closely, and found dust on it. No one had played it for a long time. Robin, Cyborg, and especially Beast Boy couldn't live without their precious games… if they were still alive at all, that is. Raven twitched visibly, squashing that line of thought. Of course they were still alive. They were the Teen Titans. _Were_. Raven flinched again, standing erect and turning to the couch.

The was a large groove where Cyborg usually sat. Beast Boy's couch pillow was still ruffled, too. A deep ache suddenly grew in Raven's heart, and she futilely tried to surpress it. What in Azar's name had happened while she was gone? How long had she been gone? _Where the hell had she gone_ **_to_**? The last thing she remembered was being sucked into that vortex while holding the disk of Dark Fall. She suddenly gasped. _That was it_! Her powers had been set off by the lightning, and she'd been sucked in! "Looks like…" Raven whispered. "Looks like I'll be playing after all. This looks real, though… I gotta find a way out of here." she knew she would have to be careful, and tried to remember everything she could from the games she had seen the boys playing. The game itself must've been twisted to fit the Titan's Tower, so it wasn't the same as the original…

Fighting games didn't fit. Neither did racing. Or shoot-em-ups. Raven strained her memory, half-afraid something would blow up. This was unlike any game the boys had played. It was dark. It was cold. And… Raven found herself smiling. "My kinda game." She murmured. She suddenly stopped. Most games had one thing in common, and even Raven knew that one thing. **_Items_**. She quite suddenly realized she had no pockets. Starfire's purse was on the kitchen counter, and Raven went over to it. It was pink, but it would have to do. You could tell a lot about Starfire by the contents of her purse, but that's not what Raven was looking for. She unzipped all the zippers and turned it upside down. Money, make up, some playing cards, a picture of Robin, and some ticket stubs fell out. A tube of lipstick fell open, splattering the stuff everywhere. How had it gotten warm enough to be liquid? Raven tried not to think of blood as she watched the red make-up make a puddle on the counter.

Slinging the purse on her shoulder and feeling like an idiot for using something pink, Raven started forward. The message on the answering machine was from Beast Boy, so why not start in his room? Raven came to the elevator, and remembered that the power was off. "No elevator… _yet_." She'd helped Cyborg rebuild his car on one occasion, so Raven knew her way around mechanics here and there. But… the controls to the elevator were in the basement. Wasn't that where Beast Boy said they'd found… _whatever it was_? Raven made the logical decision and took the _stairs_… _upward_, to Beast Boy's room. Simply levitating up the stairwell, she found the right floor easily and stopped in front of the door.

She pushed it open and found the hall. It looked normal enough, just… elderly, like it hadn't been touched in ages. To her surprise, the emergency lights were on. The pricks of light were in pairs, one on each side of the hallway, all the way to the end. Raven stepped out the stairwell, looking around carefully. Beast Boy had been taken from his very room, so whatever it was that had gotten him wasn't limited to the basement.

_Two emergency lights at the end of the hall went out. _Raven noticed immiediatly, coming to a halt. _Two more, closer, went out with a soft whir_. She braced for battle, clenching her fists and ready to blow the whole damn hallway up. Whatever got her friends was **not** going to get her!_ Another pair of lights went out, even closer_. Raven held her breath. _The two lights right near her went out, and she was left in a horrible, silent darkness. _She could hear herself breathing… She could hear her heart beating….

"_Haaaaseeeeoooohraaaaaaseeeeeeeth_….." it didn't make any sense at all, a whisper… coming closer… _closer_… closer as though it were a person walking down the hall as it spoke. "_Raaaaaashaaaaaa eeeeeeeeenooooooossssss_…." Raven's heart was starting to beat harder, pounding against her ribcage. The horrible, haunting hiss was something that would haunt her for a long time… "_**Ranakaaaaa**_!" The whisper was right in her ear, and Raven recoiled with a cry of fear! Her powers went off, exploding in every direction.

Raven roared a battle cry and went full-auto on the hallway itself! Even if the enemy _was_ invisible, it wouldn't survive her onslaught of deadly magic. Bolts of black energy pierced the roof, the floor, and every inch of wall. Giant pieces of plaster and stone were falling this way and that, destroying the hallway entirely. Raven yelped, backing into the stairwell.

A wave of dust hit Raven and she coughed heavily. Her hands still black and her heart still racing, she peered into the hall when all was quiet. She licked her dry lips anxiously, waiting for any sign of movement or sound. After a long time, the dust settled. Raven gasped aloud, running back into the hallway.

**_The hallway was fine. As though she'd never lifted a finger._**

Raven felt sweat trickling on her brow, and quickly wiped it away. She pulled back her hood, getting a closer look. The entire hall had… what…? _Repaired itself or something_? What kind of game was _this_? She suddenly remembered she truly was in a game. Most games didn't have permanently destroy-able environments. Thoroughly shaken, she edged forward a few steps. The emergency lights suddenly came back on, and she jumped. Every single light broke with a brilliant spray of sparks. Raven shielded herself from it with her cloak, only getting more upset. She emerged, and found them all repaired again. Sighing in frustration and with just a hint of fatigue, Raven warily approached Beast Boy's room.

Her heart still pounding, she prepared for the worst and shoved the door open. Raven was met with a sight that she'd never expected upon entering. The pizza boxes were gone. The banana peels picked up. The bed was made. The carpet was visible. It was… _clean_. "What's wrong with this picture?" Raven whispered, still on edge from the whispering _thing_ in the hallway. She still didn't know what haunted the tower… but even if it was all a game, Raven didn't think she could take that for granted. It was real enough to her. If she died in the game, or got taken by the whispering thing, or _**whatever**,_ she suddenly knew… she'd be trapped there forever. But… if she _won_ the game, would she be set free? Or… would she just have to start over again? In an endless loop forever?

Trying not to think about it that way, Raven stepped into the room and carefully closed the door. A huge, black symbol was scratched into the door, and she squinted at it. "Oh my…" she couldn't even finish the sentence, for she'd already recognized it. It looked like crosshairs that you would see on a gun sight, but… the space within the circle didn't have the little plus in it. Raven recognized it… oh yes, she did. "_A binding symbol_…" she whispered, touching it. "Wax…" she recognized the texture of what had made the mark. Raven saw Beast Boy's desk was strewn with papers and wittled down black crayons. "He was trying to hold it back…" Raven whispered in amazement. "Keeping it out of his room long enough to call for help…" She went paler than normal, looking at the walls of his bedroom. Almost all of his posters had been hastily torn down, tossed into the trash... to make room for more binding symbols. They were all over the walls, varying in size and intensity. But, all of them were black. Beast Boy had figured out to draw a binding symbol? _How_…?

She suddenly saw the culprit on the desk. One of Raven's books, taken from her room by the green teen, was lying on his desk. She went and picked it up, reading the title aloud, "Ancient Alchemy Explained." She squinted, putting it back down where she'd found it.

Raven sifted through the papers on his desk. This looked like the sort of thing Robin would be doing. Desperate research, scribbled notes… all in Beast Boy's terrible handwriting. She sat on his bed, heaving a sigh and wondering what to do. She leaned back on her hands and felt something hard beneath the comforter. It was… _another_ _book_? "How many books did he take from my…" Raven fell short, looking at the title. It read '_Garfield Logan_.' Who was _that_? Raven didn't recognize it from her own collection, so she opened it. Her eyes widened in realization and she stood quickly. "Beast Boy's _diary_… his real name is Garfield Logan!" she whispered. The quick, light scrawl was his, and the dates were recent.

_Dear Diary, __Today I was sure I was gonna beat Cyborg at Super Racer 5000, but he tailed me and ran me off the road –_

Raven knew that wasn't what she was looking for, and flipped ahead.

_Dear Diary_, _Raven is so damn hot. Her cloak keeps her body hidden, but when she moves I can catch a glimpse of her legs –_

Raven flushed, knowing that wasn't what she wanted either. She'd have to speak with him about that later. She looked down at herself. Well… her outfit didn't have any pants legs… she quickly got back on track, flipping ahead again.

_Dear Diary, __We stopped Mumbo Jumbo from robbing the bank today. He's kinda weird, but we stopped him no problem! Starfire was all, "Joy!" And Raven was all, "Hmm." And Robin was all –_

Raven flipped a few more pages, and noticed the handwriting had changed. It seemed quicker, more messy. As though he'd been in a hurry writing it.

_Dear Diary, Each entry could be my last now. We let it loose. We didn't mean to! Honest! How were we supposed to know our house was sitting on some kind of shrine thingy! It got out as me and Cyborg were running out and slamming the stone door switch. Just long enough for it to get out…I'm scared… I wish Raven was here. She'd know what to do. Robin doesn't look like he believes us, but Cyborg and me hafta do something. We can't just let it run free in our house! I heard the whispering at my door about an hour ago, trying to get me to come out. I stole one of Raven's books and looked up a binding symbol. That should keep it out for a little while. It musta lost interest in me or something, because it left pretty quick. Maybe it was the binding symbol? The book I borrowed said it would work as long as the door was closed…_

Raven knew that the last statement was true. One of the first rules of barrier magic. Have a physical barrier in the way as well, so the magic can work with it to form an effective barring. She bit her lip, sitting on the bed again. Beast Boy's voice was almost in her head as she kept reading. She shuddered slightly, going on to the next entry.

_Dear Diary, __Starfire saw it. I can see it in her eyes. She looks older now, like it sucked the happy out of her. Robin thinks she's sick, and yelled at me when I mentioned the thing again. What the hell is it? What does it want from us? Is it a ghost? No… it's something else. Something way worse. __Cyborg and I know its real, and Starfire tried to convince Robin too. But… he doesn't believe us! Why? With all the other crap we've faced down as super heroes, why not this? Does he thinks its some kinda prank? I don't think we can fight this thing normally, though…. It's a different **kind** of evil. Like 'Wicked Scary' kind of evil._

Raven looked around the room, glancing at the emergency light near the doorway that was lighting the room. Licking her dry lips again, she sat cross-legged before continuing. Finding the start of the next entry, she went on reading…

_Dear Diary, __I went back to that shrine. It looked old. A mean really old. I looked for anything that might help us stop it… and I actually found something. Robin's no help. I hate him for that. He still hasn't run into it yet, so he's not buying anything we say. Cyborg's been all over the Internet looking for stuff on dark spirits, but he came up with nothing. Starfire spent most of the day in Raven's room with the door open, looking through her books. She says that some of them are in Azar, Raven's home language. __But… I found **something**. Down in the shrine's hallway...I knew it was important, because when I picked it up it glowed. It was a piece of vellum. Do you know what vellum is, Diary? It's **skin**. **Animal skin**. Aside from being sick to touch it, I looked at it, and you know what I found? Symbols! At the very top, real big, was the binding symbol that I'm using on my door. That piece of vellum is the key. __Robin won't be any good unless he runs into the shadow thing itself, and he refuses to go into the basement and look. Stubborn jackass. So, I took the vellum to Cyborg and Starfire. We decided to break it into pieces, and hide them so the shadow thing wouldn't get them. They're the symbols to bind it back where it belongs. We researched for a long time, and Starfire found about half of them in Raven's books!_

Alchemy symbols, Raven knew. If it was on vellum, then it was more than five thousand years old. They must've had lyrics, or words, to go with them. Reciting them in the right order would probably seal the creature-shadow-thing up again. The teenage girl suddenly saw her goal, and read the next entry:

_Dear Diary,_

_Its awful. Just… **awful**. It got **Starfire**. We found the twelfth symbol's meaning today after so much work, and we were on our way to the shrine… together. Stafire went to speak with Robin in the common room, to try and convince him one last time. He didn't believe her, and she was in tears. She rushed away on her own…… **and that was the last we saw of her**. We went to her room, and it was a big mess. __Robin believes us now. We've gotta get to the shrine and recite the spell that goes with the twelve symbols. Remember, we split them up. Speaking them aloud would be powerful magic, one of Raven's books said. I hid them all in great hiding places… and hid the meanings to each one nearby to the symbols that went with them.…Just in case we fail. __I sent for help today, and I hope it arrives before we have to go down there. Robin is angry and confused, and Cyborg is just really quiet. I don't know what to do but wait for Raven. If anyone can save us from this thing… it would be **her**._

Raven paused, her lip actually trembling. He'd been counting on her… and she hadn't been there. Now that thing had them all… and it was her fault. One of her tears hit the page, and she saw there were only a few sentences left in the entire book to read.

_Last Entry, __Raven's smart enough to find all the symbols, I know it. One's in my room. I left it behind one of my posters… the only one still on the wall. I've been drawing binding symbols everywhere, trying to hold it back as best I can with crayons. It's probably laughing at me… whatever it is… down in that hell hole it calls a home…__I'm all alone, Diary… all alone… I hate this. **I HATE IT SO BADLY**! Why did it take them? **WHY**! Cyborg, Robin, and Starfire are all gone… I can't find them anywhere, and I'm scared to go down to the shrine on my own…… oh Raven… where are you…? Uh oh… I hear it coming… I better call Raven before it's too late…_

That was it. Raven bent forward slightly, clutching the book in her hands. Her hands shook and she squeezed her burning eyes shut. They were gone. All of them swallowed by the whispering darkness. Remembering she had something to hold useful items in, she put the diary gently in the purse. It didn't seem to be such a bright pink anymore. "The poster…?" Raven saw, as she'd seen earlier, one poster had stayed on the wall despite the binding symbols all around it. It was a poster of a T-rex, one of Beast Boy's favorite animals. Swallowing with a dry mouth and throat, Raven stood. She walked slowly to the poster. The T-rex seemed to be staring at her… she shook the uncertainty out of herself, reaching up with trembling hands. She tore to poster down, tearing it in half in the process.

A dark, harshly drawn symbol had been scratched into the wall with black crayons. It looked like a Christian cross turned sideways, with a little hook on the long end. Raven's eyes narrowed, and she reached to touch it. Suddenly, it glowed with all the colors of the rainbow! She jumped back, listening for the whispering shadow. She heard no whispers, and the glow was gone just as quickly as it had come. "Okay Beast Boy… I found it…" Raven whispered. "What's the word that goes with it?" she looked around the room for the lyric, the word that would tell her the meaning behind the symbol. The binding symbol had no word to go with it, since it was merely a single symbol spell. According to Beast Boy's diary, she needed to find **_twelve_** symbols. Heaving a frustrated sigh, she sat on the bed again. She stared at the dark, bold symbol on the wall. "If I were Beast Boy where would I put it…? He said the lyrics were nearby to their symbols…" She suddenly saw something she hadn't looked at before. The poster she'd ripped off the wall had writing on the back. Falling to her hands and knees, Raven turn the poster pieces face down and brought the two halves together so she could see the back as a whole.

A single, huge-lettered word greeted her.

**LUSSA** (Luss-ah) 

"_Lussa_?" Raven mumbled, not recognizing the word at all. The symbol on the wall suddenly glowed brightly, as though in response to its own name! Raven gave a start, and soon it faded back to looking like black crayon again. "What the hell _is_ all this…?" Raven whispered, holding her head. She sat on the bed as she did so, heaving a sigh.

Suddenly, a soft whisper made itself known from the one place Raven never would've guessed. _The air vent._ The whispering shadow… _it was **coming** for her_! Raven stood quickly as a terrible _black mist began pouring into the room_...

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**_OMG! Is Raven already in trouble? Will her friends ever figure out where she, or are they connected to the game too? Does anyone like this fic at ALL? Review and let me know what you think! Thank you for your reading time!_**


	3. Kars

I've received several complaints implying that I might be prejudiced against foreign games. But… it's not true. I was simply giving some background on the game DARK FALL, and it just happens to be a game from England, okay? No more flames involving the game! I'm sensitive…! (weep) .--. Oh, and by the way? The words that go with the symbols have no meaning, just in case you were wondering. I had this one dude say that Lussa sounded like the Chinese for 'wreck.' Oo I was a little wierded out, but know this. They're just incantation words. They don't really have a translation. I don't own Teen Titans!­

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Raven's Game

Part 3: **Kars**

Raven's breathing became quick and uneven. The mist was gathering around her feet, and rising like water. She clenched her teeth, jumping up on Beast Boy's bed. What _was_ it? Where was it _coming from_? Raven tried using her powers to seal the vent, but her fear held her back. She couldn't control her powers, and the mist kept pouring in. There were binding symbols all over the walls, but obviously Beast Boy hadn't put one on the vent itself.

Her heart pounding, she watched helplessly as the room started filling with the unholy fog. It was ice cold, like the doors had been. Raven began to hyper ventilate when it was past her ankles, standing on the bed as she was. Her mind was going at a million miles an hour. If her powers weren't working, she couldn't phase through the wall and get away, or even make it to the door. She thought she felt something graze her ankle and she jumped, climbing onto the top bunk. What was she going to do –! The entire room was becoming hazy and… _oh no_… the whispers were returning.

The invisible whispering shadow was coming back for her! Raven looked on fearfully as the terrible black, smoky substance started rising. It was taking shape. _**Oh God**_, it was taking _shape_. The smoke started forming into huge, _clawed hand_. It was big enough to crush a person like a _twig_. Raven let out a terrified scream, and a blazing white light made itself known on the back of her hand. She looked at it desperately as the hand started reaching for her. Unable to get enough air in her lungs from hyperventilating, she began to feel light-headed. The hand was coming closer, formed from smoke but still somehow solid. Raven looked from her hand to the giant hand, and the light faded from her hand to reveal something unexpected. _The symbol for Lussa was on her hand_, glittering with an inner light all its own.

The fingers began to make a cage around her, and terrified tears were pouring from her eyes. Suddenly, in a last-ditch effort, Raven screamed, "**_LUSSA_**!" The symbol on her hand flashed with a brilliant, holy light!

_The hand, the smoke, and the haze vanished._

Raven lay there on Beast Boy's top bunk, sweating and breathing in quick, fretful gasps. She looked carefully at the vent, and it looked as innocent as ever. She looked down at herself, wiping the sweat from her brow. That had been _way_ too close. It had almost taken her. Clutching at her chest and trying to calm down enough to retain her powers, Raven dangled her legs off of the bed. She clutched a pillow to her chest, inhaling Beast Boy's scent. After a few minutes of chanting her three words, she stood on the floor again. Her knees wobbled just a little, and she fully realized how scared she had been. Swallowing and steadying herself like the goth that she was, Raven looked at the symbol on the wall. _Lussa_ had saved her life. She looked at the one on her hand. It glittered softly, but just barely, as through it were dormant. "Thanks Beast Boy…" she whispered. "Thanks for making the first one easy…" Raven knew, however, that it was only going to get harder.

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Cyborg opened the door to the basement, his shoulder light flipping up and turning on. "Raven?" he called into the darkness. Robin, Beast Boy and Starfire stood just behind him, peering past his broad shoulders. They slowly descended the stairs, on the lookout for their fifth team member. "_Raven, _you down here?" There was no response, and they reached the bottom without getting a reply. He shined his light this way and that.

Robin, Beast Boy and Starfire looked in all directions. "Where has our friend gone to?" Starfire whispered. "She is not in this morbid place, and Beast Boy thinks she would not brave the storm… then where would she be?"

Robin flipped open his T-communicator. "Raven, come in." he waited for a few moments. "_Raven_." He said a little more insistently. "_Raven, answer now_! Where _are_ you?" He got no response. "She couldn't be out of range… these things go for like fifteen miles…" he mumbled, looking uncertain. He suddenly looked to the alien princess. "Where would you go if you were Raven, you know her better than any of us." He asked, putting his T-communicator away. The purple-skirted girl thought for a long time, but could come up with nothing. "Then, we'll regroup in the common room and think of a plan. If she's gone missing, we have to find her right away." The other three nodded, and it was so. They trooped back up the stairs, and Robin cast on last glance around the room before following. He'd helped build the tower, but somehow the basement never ceased to freak him out.

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Raven was in the common room, or the living room, or whatever one might call it. But, not the same one her friends were in. She'd decided to stop for a moment and recount what had happened so far. She sat on the sofa, and it groaned in protest. The wood must've been ready to give out. So… _the tower was now haunted, the others were gone, and there were eleven more symbols to be found to stop this darkness from spreading_. It's influence was strong in the dark, it looked like. Raven remembered that it hadn't come near her until all the lights were out in the hall. And then, it was waiting for the mist to gather in Beast Boy's room. That meant she'd have to get the power back on. There was a switch-box in the basement, but she doubted that would do much good. It wasn't a technical problem that knocked the power out, so going down to look wouldn't be very wise.

Raven looked out the huge window-wall of the common room as she thought. The angry fog swirled outside, blocking off Jump City from view. If it was even there anymore… who knew how far the shadow had spread itself in the time it had been awake. What was the next best thing to getting the lights all back on…? She stood, going over to the kitchen area with an idea. Wasn't there usually a – _yes_! Raven discovered a large flashlight in one of the junk drawers, and flicked the switch up to turn it on. The beam of light pierced the darkness, stopping on the ceiling. She aimed it around the room, making sure it was a good, strong light. When she was satisfied, she nodded and turned it off. She didn't want the battery dying on her at the worst possible time, like in the movies. Remembering she was carrying a purse for useful items, she stuffed it inside. The broad end where the lightbulb was stuck out, but it stayed in there. Nodding to herself, Raven leaned against the counter.

Where was she supposed to go now? Beast Boy had told her where the first one was, but hadn't left any other clues that she'd seen. She recalled what she'd seen in his diary, though. He'd hidden them all in good hiding places, so… where would Beast Boy hide something he didn't want found? Then, she remembered the vellum, or animal skin, that the original symbols were written on. He'd torn that up and hidden it as well. The words were strong enough, but it would be nice to find at least one piece… to examine how old it was.

Licking her dry lips, she sat in deep thought for a while. Cyborg and Beast Boy had set it free, and Beast Boy's diary spoke of Cyborg doing research… Starfire as well. Maybe their rooms would give her some new information… _and a symbol or two along the way_. Raven frowned after a moment, though. Even if there was a symbol in each Titan's respectable rooms, that would still leave seven that needed to be found. Thinking of things in the long run wasn't helping, so Raven pushed it from her mind.

Deciding to go to Cyborg's room next, she took the stairs since the elevator was dead. The hall was long and poorly lit with emergency lights. But… Raven heard no whisperings, so she felt a little better. She found the door marked with his name, and pushed it open. The room was full of things foreign to the metal man's way of life, and she carefully surveyed the whole thing before stepping in. There were mountains of elderly books everywhere. Drawings, schematics of the tower with red X's on them… pens and loads of scribbled on paper was all over the place. His desk was strewn with notes and symbol scribblings, just like Beast Boy's was. a few books lay closed here and there, and his charging table/bed lay in the horizontal position. It acted as another desk, bits and pieces of information everywhere. Raven sifted through it all, trying to read his handwriting. Didn't anyone she lived with have readable _penmenship_! All the technical equipment was off, she noticed, save one computer monitor. That caught Raven's interest, and she went to it. It was blank, and labeled with a sticky note that said '_Broken – needs basic repair_' on it. She frowned in disappointment. Of course it wouldn't be that easy… the glass of the monitor was dusty, but wait… if the power was out why was it on? Raven knew nothing about computers, but followed the wires to look for an electrical outlet. She found none, so… maybe it had some kind of internal battery? She didn't know, but sat on the swiveling chair in front of the monitor instead.

Leaning on the desk and resting her head on her hand, supporting it with an elbow, she sighed. This was going to be harder than she thought. There might not be any symbols in the room, and searching would be a waste of time… but no, Cyborg was Beast Boy's best friend. Surely he would've trusted at least _part_ of their saving grace with the metal man? Rubbing her chakra gem out of habit, she stood again. Putting her hood down so she could see better, she slowly and carefully searched the room. Careful to put everything she touched back exactly the way she found it… she came up with nothing. She checked behind one of Cyborg's wall posters, but found nothing. Even Beast Boy wouldn't allow a repeat like _that_, she knew. Grunting in frustration, she leaned against the wall to think. There was a soft, barely audible whirring sound. Cyborg's computer popped out of the wall, startling her. But, what was even more startling… it was **on**. Coming closer since she'd accidentally tripped the mechanism to bring it into view, she studied the screen. It was on some sort of simple word processor. The message on it was brief:

_**(320X, 670Y)**_

What the hell was _that_ supposed to mean? Raven puzzled over it for a long time, staring at it. Was it a coordinance to a _location_? She doubted it, since the tower seemed to be the only area she had access to at the moment. X and Y were usually in math for variables, but that train of thought was a dead end as well. Beast Boy had flunked math his whole life, she was willing to bet. He wouldn't base a hiding place on a math problem, even if he'd given the symbol to Cyborg. They could be mechanical parts to a machine, like when you read the instructions to a model car or… **_THE_ _CAR_**! Raven's eyes widened in realization. If Cyborg had a symbol in his possession, he would've hidden it in his baby, the T-car!

Raven had helped him build it from scratch and although she knew very little about it anymore, she knew for certain that was where she would find the second symbol. Heaving a sigh and puffing her cheeks to expel it from her lungs, she exited Cyborg's room. She pondered what the numbers were for, and stopped. Going back inside, she got a piece of paper and one of the many writing utensils strewn everywhere. She wrote down the numbers on the screen, big and bold, along with a small drawing of Lussa and its symbol. Glad she was a little more organized, she stuffed the pen and a few more sheets of paper into the purse she had picked up. Once again, it seemed to be losing its pink. Raven thought nothing of it, and exited the room, bound for the garage.

Taking the stairs down, down, down, to the floor just above the basement… the garage. Cyborg's shrine to all things involving cars and machinery. It was his workshop, his santuary… and maybe his _tomb_. Raven shook her head to get the thought out, arriving and pushing the double doors open. She was surprised to see that there were several lights on. They were electrical lanterns, the powerful kind that the military used. Raven inspected on, finding it plugged in to a silent power generator. **250,000 Candle Power, **it said on the side. Raven didn't know if that was a lot or not, but with half a dozen or so of those lanterns in the big room… it was pretty well lit. (A/N: _Just in case you were wondering, that kind of lantern has the power to blind someone for several minutes if they look directly into it when it comes on..._ Oo)

But… the T-car looked _pathetic_. If Cyborg had seen it in this state, he would've had a system crash and a heart attack all at once. The paint was faded and the shine was gone, sacrificed to the dust that covered it. The left side-view mirror was cracked, a few pieces on the floor next to it. The tires looked okay, but Raven knew she wasn't driving it anywhere. Licking her lips, she approached it and peered inside. Shading her eyes and pressing herself against one of the windows, she took a quick sweep to…… _to what_? Make sure there were no dead bodies inside?

Raven smiled, trying a nervous laugh at such a silly thought. She failed miserably, and tried the driver's side door. It opened, and she sat inside. "Okay Cyborg, here I am…" she whispered, drawing the piece of paper out of the purse. She unfolded it and studied the numbers again. "Three-hundred and twenty X… and six-hundred and seventy Y…?" What did it _mean_? Raven saw the huge array of buttons, knobs and dials in the T-car. She'd never even tried to understand what any of them were for… how was she supposed to figure any of it out without any help from Cyborg _himself_? Heaving a sigh but knowing she had to be in the right place, Raven looked at **_a lot_** of buttons in turn. Some of them had labels like 'oil slick,' 'rockets,' 'sonic cannon,' 'mini turbo,' 'hi-beams,' and 'tire spikes.' Others had no labels at all, and were placed in groups according to color. Raven didn't even want to know how Cyborg remembered what the panel of maybe thirty little yellow buttons was for. She rolled her eyes, but she had to admire his dedication to his own hobby. Raven was much the same in her meditation and book-reading… Beast Boy and his video games… she trailed off in her own mind and went back to searching. "Hmm?" Something new caught her eye, and she looked at it closely. The label read '_Long-Range Camera Mode_.' She'd never seen Cyborg use _that_… she reached and, hoping the car's gadgets worked while the engine was off… pressed the little silver button.

_Something dropped from the car's ceiling, right onto Raven's face_. She yelped in surprise, batting it away like it was a large bug. It wasn't a camera at all… the button had been a _fake_! A little panel had dropped down, and there was a pair of photographs in them. One was of Cyborg and Jynx, of all people… at the Hive academy dance. They were posed happily, and Raven noticed they seemed to be _pointing_. Their fingers were interlocked, save their pointer-fingers… and they were pointing to… Raven followed their fingers with her eyes, tracing a line in thin air. She gasped. A tiny little button, practically hidden within another button was along the line. It was like one of those re-setter buttons that you could only press with a paperclip or a needle. The button itself was labeled…. **320X**. Raven fumbled, keeping her right pointer finger on the button without pressing it or any others.

The second photograph, she found, was of Cyborg and Bumblebee. Cyborg was giving a thumbs up, and Bumblebee was giving a mock-salute. They weren't pointing to anything… _were they_? _Thumbs up_… Raven looked up, inside the panel itself. Sure enough, there was a little pinprick of a button there as well. It was labeled… you guessed it, **670Y**. Feeling victorious, Raven took the paper clips that were holding both photographs, unbending them into straight lines. She placed the first one gently in the first button's hole, then the second one. She quickly realized she would have to stretch out since her arms weren't as long as Cyborg's. Holding her breath, Raven pressed both hard.

The car whirred to life, startling Raven and making her instinctively grab the steering wheel. The front lights were on high and.……… and they were projecting something on the wall ahead. Raven squinted, and saw what she'd been looking for. She corrected herself, seeing that only **one** of the headlights had come on. It was like a spotlight, showing the image of what she'd come for. It was a symbol all right.

It was an equilateral triangle, by the looks of it. And, on the right side, there was what looked kind of like a fishing hook sticking out. The second symbol. "Clever, Cyborg." She mumbled, allowing herself a smile. "Now…where's the _lyric_?" Almost automatically, she reached up and turned over both photographs. She nodded, looking satisfied with her detective work. There on the back of the picture of Cyborg with Jynx, in big bold letters… was the word:

**KARS** (Kar-suh)

"Heh… _Kars_…" she actually smiled at the irony. It was only one letter off of what she was sitting in. "No wonder Cyborg hid it here…" Raven's left hand suddenly started glowing, and she held it out to keep the light out of her eyes. It burned a little, then the light faded. She drew it back… _the symbol for Kars was on her hand_! It glittered gently, almost soberly. "I hope these symbols don't start appearing in embarrassing places…" Raven murmured. She inspected the backs of her hands, Lussa and Kars in her view. "If a symbol shows up on my chest, I'm gonna be pissed…" she found humor in that and snorted, shaking her head as she got out of the car. The headlight had faded, and she knew she would learn no more from the garage. "That's two down… _and ten to go_." Raven winced when she said that. It sounded corny, and made her goal sound far away. Shaking her head and exiting the garage, she made her way back up to the common room so she could plan her next move. **_Starfire's_** room would probably be next…

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_No, Trigon is not the bad guy in this fic. Raven's getting the symbols on her body as she gathers them, but they're not like the one's from the series. These are **alchemy** symbols. So, don't expect a Trigon appearance, okay? I just thought it would be good to have the symbols in Raven's view at all times… and maybe put one or two in an embarrassing place. ; Don't flame me for saying that, I'm sensitive! .--. But… review if you would, please! I enjoy the attention and the ego boost! They fuel my want to update more quickly! Thankies!_


	4. Oliviak

Here I am again! Many people that review my story have started searching for DARK FALL: THE JOURNAL. So, I thought I might help them on their quest. Number one, its not a **recent** game, so its in one of those CD case-sized boxes. The smaller ones, y'know? Number two, and most importantly, THE ADVENTURE COMPANY makes it. Find The Adventure Company by going to or something, and it'll lead you straight to Dark Fall… and several other choice games in the horror-puzzle genre. I don't own Teen Titans, so on with the show!

* * *

Raven's Game

Part 4: **Oliviak**

"Okay, we got the list now." Beast Boy put up a big, hastily-made posterboard for all to see. Gesturing to Robin, he sat down.

The boy wonder stood. "I don't think that Raven was kidnapped. She's a super hero, after all. Plus, we would've received a ransom call or something…" he waited for that to sink in. The others seemed to agree, so he went on, "I think that Raven is still somewhere in the tower, but… maybe only a part of her. Remember, we're talking about the same Raven that keeps her emotions in a mirror." He pointed to the poster board Beast Boy had drawn up. On it was the name of every room in the tower, compliments of Cyborg's schematics of the place. "Now. We're going to have to search the tower, room by room, corner by corner, for any sign of her." They stared at him, and he emphasized. "Not just Raven herself, either. I want you all to look for locks of hair, a shoe, or a piece of cloth that might be hers. Leave no drawer, box, or room unexplored." He pointed to them each in turn, but finally he stopped on Starfire. "Starfire, you're the only other girl here, so I need you to search her room yourself. Look for any signs that she might've left for some reason. If she's still in the tower that's good, but… just in case, y'know?"

"Why do you wish it to be me to search Raven's room for something out of place?" Starfire asked, tilting her head. "Surely Cyborg's eye of night or Beast Boy's canine nose would aid us better in the focus of our search?" She seemed nervous to be entering the goth girl's room when she was not at home. "If Raven suddenly appeared, she would be very angry with me…" she looked uncomfortable.

"You gotta look there because it's a _girl's room_, is what Robin's tryin' to say." Beast Boy forced a laugh. "One of us might be a pantie thief, looking through her drawers all day!" That got a laugh from Cyborg, but Robin glared them both down.

"Yeah well… something like that. You might see something that boys wouldn't recognize as abnormal since you're female." He looked at his team sideways, but then turned back to the list of rooms. "I want you all to spend at least twenty minutes in each room depending on its size, and then report anything unusual on this board. Starfire, spend longer than that in Raven's room." He held up a blue, red, and green marker, choosing black for himself. "Look at every detail f the room for anything out of place. Then, move onto the next room if you're sure. Everyone understand?" They all nodded. "Good. Titans, _search_!"

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Raven sat in the common room, her head in her hands. She'd searched the common room for any symbols, trying to think of a reason not to go to Starfire's room. Her room was where that _thing_ had taken her, she'd remembered what Beast Boy's Diary had said.

She'd opened the disk port in the Gamestation hoping for a symbol, but got nothing but more dust. She searched between every DVD and music CD they owned with a magnifying glass from the junk drawer, opening each one in turn. None of them had any clues, circled words, or anything that pointed to a new symbol. Raven peered under the couch, half afraid the shadow-thing was under there waiting for her. Scolding herself for such a childish notion, Raven sat down on it again. Surely there was at least _one_ symbol in the common room? It was where the Titans spent most of their time!

Sighing in defeat at last, she rose and stuck the magnifying glass in the purse with her other useful items. Starfire's room awaited her.

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Beast Boy was a mouse, given the job to search the ventilation shaft. Surely Raven wasn't hiding _there_, but Robin said search everywhere. But, was she _hiding_? If she'd left the tower, their entire search would've been pointless, but… she would've left some signs of a hasty departure. And, so far, none had been found. Not a scrap of her clothes… or a lock of hair… or _anything_. Beast Boy's little black mouse nose wiggled. He was starting to get really worried.

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Raven stood outside of Starfire's room for a long time, unsure. Something in Starfire's room was giving off light. The light was peeking through the crack under the door, blinking with a fizzing, popping sound. What was it? Was it safe to go in? Was the shadow-thing in there waiting for her? She couldn't hear any whisperings… she decided she wasn't getting anywhere by just standing there.

Reaching slowly and carefully, she gripped the doorknob. It was ice cold. Summoning her courage, Raven threw the door open. A tornado had paid a visit to Starfire's room. _Half of it had been blown to pieces_. Raven quickly walked to one of the blast marks on the wall and touched it. No… Starfire had caused all the damage. The dark Titan suddenly put two and two together. Beast Boy's diary told her that Starfire had last been seen fleeing to her room. She'd guessed on her own that Star had fought the darkness when it came for her… and apparently damaged her room in the process. _Had no one heard the battle and come to help her_? Raven heaved a troubled sigh, placing a hand on one of the blast marks. She leaned on it for a moment, and she heard the wall groan in protest. It was barely holding up. The last thing she needed was a cave in… Quickly standing straight again, Raven began her search of the room itself.

She gasped when she got a better look at one of the walls. A half-drawn binding symbol decorated the grungy surface, drawn with… was that _lipstick_? Raven made an educated guess right then. She'd heard the darkness coming, and had jumped up to draw a binding symbol on her wall since she'd somehow forgotten to do so earlier… she must've been too upset that Robin didn't believe her about the shadow-thing to remember to do so. Raven reached and touched the half-drawn symbol, frowning unhappily. Poor Starfire… in turmoil with the one she loved, taken by shadows and whisked away to God knew where… Raven tried not to think about it.

The next of four walls had something equally disturbing. _A pair of scissors were stabbed into it._. Deeply shaken by such an image as Starfire trying to stab _anything_… she approached it to have a better look. There were words slashed into the wall with the scissors! Raven peered closely, but couldn't make them out. Getting the flashlight out of the purse she'd borrowed from the Tameranian princess, she angled it so that the scratches had shadows in them and were thusly readable.

**EVEAL EM ENOLA**

"Eveal em enola?" Raven whispered, her brow furrowing. "Is that a lyric to one of the words…?" she pondered for a few moments, staring at the haunting handwriting. "No… the other two were only one word…" she knew it couldn't have been what she was looking for, but still… "_Eveal em enola…_" Raven murmured, trying to figure out what it meant. Was it some kind of Tameranian warding spell, to keep evil away? Starfire didn't seem like the type for _magic_… Raven swallowed loudly, tracing the large 'E' in the first word with her finger. It was so sharply done… as though in _desperation_.

Of all things, she looked under Starfire's bed next. What she found there was something she didn't expect. It was one of Robin's uniforms. She drew it out, laying it on the bed and examining it. Had she and Robin been _messing around_…? No, she'd been upset with him before she'd disappeared… or been _taken_. Shaking the horrible thought of Starfire being dragged away by some shapeless evil from her mind, Raven suddenly yelped in pain. Something had pricked her finger, drawing a drop of blood. Her finger jumped to her mouth, sucking and grunting in annoyance at the pain. There was a needle for sewing sticking out of the lower back of the uniform. Raven looked closer, and her eyes widened in shock. There, sewn into the uniform itself, was a tiny **_binding symbol_**. "She was trying to protect him…" Raven whispered, an icy chill going down her spine. "Putting it on the lower back where he wouldn't see it… _she was trying to protect him_… he didn't believe her, so she stole one of his uniforms to help him…" She gritted her teeth, a brand new hatred for the darkness forming in her mind. She tried to hate Robin, for all his bull-headedness. But… it was no good. The others hadn't had any proof, so who was to say it wasn't all a big prank? But still… _he should've noticed how desperate they were_ _for help_. Raven thought for a moment, and stole a glance at the scissors embedded in the wall. Upon closer inspection, she found that they were _sewing scissors_. They were made to cut fine thread, and were thusly very sharp. "Hmm…" Leaving Robin's uniform on the bed, Raven went on searching for anything out of the ordinary.

She went to Starfire's dresser, where her mirror and make-up was kept. The large mirror was dusty and old-looking, barely able to give Raven a good look at herself. From what she could see, she looked wary, desperate and scared. Trying to calm her features, she pulled the drawers out one at a time, thoroughly searching each in turn. "Maybe she didn't _have_ a symbol." Raven muttered, sitting at the stool that was in front of the dresser. Raven knew she liked to sit there and experiment with make up, hair curling, and whatever else she could think of. The stool's padding was cracked, and the foam that made it easy to sit on was stale. The wood grunted, threatening to give out if she put anymore weight on it.

Raven sighed, leaning forward and looking closely at the mirror. There were little bags under her eyes, as though she hadn't slept in a week. Not knowing how long she'd been in this horrible world, she didn't know how long it had been since she'd slept. But… she wasn't going to let that stop her. She wasn't tired just yet. She heaved a mighty sigh and let it out, scattering some of the dust on the mirror. She saw the 'evael em enola' in the mirror, backward –! Raven stood, whirling around and toppling the stool with a clatter. "Evael em enola…" she whispered, going closer and touching it with her hand. She looking in the mirror, then back to the scratching. Then, she put it all together. "Leave… me… _alone_! It's **_backwards_**!" she cried, gaping in open shock. "She wrote it on the wall backwards with _scissors_, though…" she licked her lips, trying to find the logic in this. Maybe, she'd thought that the shadow would see it from the other side of the wall? Like a backwards version of her message, from the other side of a barrier? "She must've written that, and then tried to draw the binding symbol when it…" she squeezed her eyes shut, forcing back the tears. "When it _got_ her." Her voice had cracked, and she touched the scratching on the wall. "Starfire, tell me… _please_… where's the third symbol?" she looked at the scratching as though it would help her, but got no answer.

Fully depressed at having figured out what exactly had happened, her eyes wandered the room aimlessly. Then, they came to rest on Starfire's jewelry box, over on her dresser in front of the mirror. No… it couldn't be _that_ easy… Raven approached it and opened it. A tinkling, romantic version of the song 'Amazing Grace' made itself known when she did so. There wasn't much jewelry inside since that wasn't exactly Starfire's _thing_, but there were a few trinkets that made the box worthwhile. There was even a locket, although Raven found it odd that a locket-shaped picture of Robin was separate from the locket itself, but still in the box.

A little ballerina was slowly turning inside the jewelry box… and she was holding something in one of her tiny little hands. Was that… a _slip of paper_? Raven's attention was snared, so she got the flashlight and magnifying glass from the purse. Turning on the flashlight and aiming it into the box, she held the magnifying glass in front of her eye. From the ballerina's point of view, one of Raven's eyes became enormous as she zoomed in on her little plastic hand. "C'mon… _c'mon_…" Raven whispered, hardly daring to breathe.

_Suddenly it came into focus, and she saw the third symbol._

A tiny piece of paper had been carefully glued to the ballerina's hand, displaying the sacred writing. It looked like a Christian cross with a backward S leaning on it from the bottom-right side. It suddenly flared with every color of the rainbow, making Raven squint. It returned to normal, looking innocent as any other piece of paper glued to a ballerina. "Where's the _lyric_, Starfire…?" Raven breathed, barely even able to hear her own voice. She carefully inspected the ballerina's tutu, face, legs, and slippers. It wasn't written anywhere on the dancer itself… Raven looked up from the magnifying glass, looking at the locket-sized picture of Robin. "Wait… why would he be out of the locket? Was she really _that_ upset with him…?" Raven stuffed the magnifying glass back in the purse and picked up Starfire's prized golden locket. Swallowing and praying she was right, she popped it open. A little picture of a smiling Starfire greeted her… and an odd word was written in the other window. "Gotcha…" Raven whispered as she read it for the first time.

**OLIVIAK** (Oh-live-ee-ack)

"_Oliviak_…" Raven murmured. A soft shimmer of light glittered near the floor, and Raven looked down just as it faded. "Huh…?" She didn't see anything, and moved to sit on Starfire's bed. "Let me guess…" she pulled off her right shoe, inspecting her foot. Sure enough, the symbol of Oliviak had been emboldened on the top of her foot. Raven wriggled her pale little toes to spawn a smile from herself, but didn't get one. She put her shoe back on and stood, still holding Starfire's locket. She made to put it back in the jewelry box, but paused. "Mmm…" she said softly. Without really thinking about it, Raven undid the latch and put it around her neck. The picture of the happy-go-lucky Tameranian smiled up at her… and she clicked it shut. "For good luck…" she murmured to herself, dropping it inside her leotard and between her breasts.

"_Eeeee_!" Raven's heart did a flip-flop at the sound. It was _Starfire_! Raven whirled around, seeing only the mirror in the direction the sound had come from. Then soft, sputtering sounds were coming from the mirror itself. Raven, summoning her legendary courage, came close and sat on the stool again. She peered closely at the mirror, but saw nothing but dust. "Why does he not believe me?" Starfire's voice moaned, as though in great agony. "I have done nothing to betray his trust in the past… I thought… _he_ _loved me_…" Raven's expression softened. Was this some kind of recording Starfire had made? Raven thought that she was the only one with a magic mirror, but apparently she was _wrong_. "He gave me a necklace made of a precious earth metal called gold… a long time ago…" She went on, hiccuping and sniffling. Raven couldn't see her, but she knew there must've been all sorts of tears flowing.

"This was when Robin didn't believe her about the monster…" Raven murmured, eager to hear more in case it gave her another clue towards her goal.

"It has what is called a _locket_ on it. A pair of pictures are inside of it. One of him and one of me… it is… precious to me…" she fell silent for a few moments, and Raven leaned forward. "I do not care!" There was the sound of the locket being thrown into the jewelry box and slammed closed. "He does not believe me, and he does not love me!" Raven's heart began to sink as she started rambling. "I… I have no earthly world for my feelings!" she screamed in Tameranian for what felt like a whole minute to Raven, then came to a stop… huffing and puffing. Then, she was back to crying. "Why does he not believe me when I speak of the darkness that haunts our home…?" she sniffed softly. "I… I cannot stand it! I cannot take it anymore!" Raven suddenly had a really… _really_ bad feeling about this. There was a long silence, the sound of shuffling within the mirror. "This darkness… it is too much… ohh… friend Robin…" her words were softer, and Raven leaned further forward on the stool, trying to hear her. Her nose was almost touching the glass of the mirror… "I… thought you loved me…… _ohhhh_…" Starfire's voice was so soft… Something red dripped into Raven's view, and she recoiled with a cry.

_There was blood dripping down the mirror!_

"Starfire no!" Raven screamed, grasping the sides of the mirror until her fingers started stinging. "**_Don't do it_**! Suicide's not the –!" Starfire appeared in the mirror quite suddenly, laying against it as though it were on the floor. Raven's face turned ashen. There was blood all around her, and a horrible look of sadness was on her face. Her eyes were blank, though. Raven trembled trying to get a closer look none the less. Was she wearing the locket…?

Starfire's arm came out the mirror, grasping Raven's throat. The teenage girl yelped, choking as she was lifted off the floor! "You cannot stand against this darkness either, friend Raven." Starfire was no longer Starfire, but a horrible monster. Raven clutched at her throat, trying to pry her away. Slowly… Starfire started pulling her towards the mirror. She kicked at air, unable to brake free. "Do not try… it is too powerful…" Starfire hissed almost lovingly, squeezing harder.

The choking goth dangled helplessly in her grip, her eyes starting to roll into her head. "No… Starfire… _guh_…!" she hacked softly, her vision starting to cloud over. "I can't… die here… _ahhn_…" Raven's pale face was starting to turn blue. She writhed in agony, the mirror drawing ever closer. EVAEL EM ENOLA started gushing blood out of the wall, leaving a sickening trail of red across the carpet. Every time Raven tried to exhale, the grip tightened. _With only a few seconds of air left in her lungs…_ "K… _Kars_."

The mirror exploded into a thousand pieces, shooting across the room like darts. Starfire vanished completely, dropped Raven to the floor. The blood stopped flowing from the scratching on the wall, silent again. Raven lay there sprawled on her back. Coughing and hacking and trying to regain her lungs, she lay there for a long time. Had her neck bruised? She couldn't tell. As soon as she could Raven rose and staggered out of the room, slamming the door behind her. She leaned against the door once it was shut, sliding to the floor. It was there that she openly wept. What sort of horror had she become a part of? How much more would like that would she have to witness before it was over? Would she even survive that long? Speaking one of the twelve words seemed to save her ass whenever she was in trouble… but she knew each one would probably only work once during the smaller incidents. Heh… _smaller incidents_. Raven groaned at how what had just happened would eventually be called that. She couldn't use Lussa or Kars anymore until the final recitation… now all she had was Oliviak. She knew she would have to save it until the last moment, like the others. The words were her only ammunition against the darkness.

Tears flowed down Raven's face. Her powers were virtually useless now, she knew. She was so scared at what she had seen… all she had… were the clues Beast Boy had left behind for her. She leaned against Starfire's door for the longest time, breathing and hoping her windpipe hadn't been bruised shut. The gothic girl lay there trembling, not really feeling so gothic anymore.

With wet cheeks and bloodshot eyes, she forced herself to stand at last. She swallowed several times before she was able to speak properly. "It's gonna be a long night."

* * *

_Well? What do you think? Fill me in on any questions or comments you might have, n'kay? N'kay! Oh! I'm open to suggestions as to where Raven might find any symbols! I am trying to stay away from the **obvious** though. Remember there was no symbol in the Gamestation? That was an **obvious place** to look. Let's give Beast Boy some credit for coming up with some **good** hiding places, huh? Thank you in advance for any input you give me! You win a nice cookie if your symbol location gets used, and I'll mention you in my comments at the top or bottom of the chapters! Oh, and by the way? All the symbols are already determined as far as looks and words to go with them. I just need a little help with locations, m'kay? I've got a few in mind, but I don't have all twelve hiding places yet… any ideas, readers? Please review and let me know your thoughts!_


	5. Frenic

_Here I am again! I like to do fast updates, because I really hate slow ones from other writers! I'm one of those people that like to update fast so he'll keep all of his readers coming back quickly. I hope its working, and everyone is liking this story! You may have noticed, but the rating on this story is now "**M**_."_ The implied suicide of Starfire in the last chapter shook some of you up pretty badly… so I upped the rating of the story as a warning to others. I don't own Teen Titans, and on with the show! Yay!_

* * *

Raven's Game

Part 5: **Frenic**

"Okay… not there…" Cyborg was in the common room, X-ing out one of the rooms he'd thoroughly searched. "Storage rooms A through F are all clean." He reported to Robin. Everyone had been searching for quite some time, and they'd stopped for a break. The metal man sat down in the recliner, falling silent as well.

"Mmm…" Robin said, holding his chin in one hand. No traces of Raven had been found yet.

"Our friend left no reports of leaving within her own dwelling." Starfire said, having arrived last. "Her books are accounted for as far as my knowledge lets me know… her bed is made, and almost all of her clothes are present. The rest are in the room of laundry." The red head sat down, looking sad.

"Well, she's not in the vents, that's for sure…" Beast Boy made a weak attempt at a joke. Robin looked up to glare at him for such a thing, but stopped. The green teen's eyes were shining with tears. "Where… _where is she_, dude?" he whispered for fear of his voice cracking.

"We'll find her." Robin promised gently, putting a hand on his friend's shoulder. "We're the Teen Titans, and we never give up." Beast Boy actually sniffed, as though he were about to start crying. "If she's here… we'll find her sooner or later." Robin stood and went to the posterboard Beast Boy had drawn. Next to it was a blown-up schematic of Titan's Tower, red X's all over it. "Beast Boy, your poster's helping a lot. Thank you." Robin tried to praise his team a little to lift their spirits. But, it was no good. Beast Boy's elvish ears stayed in their wilted positions, Starfire still looked upset… and Cyborg was merely quiet, leaning back with his arms folded.

Everyone's eyes strayed to the love seat, though. That's where Raven would sit everyday to read, sitting Indian-style and lost in her own little world. But, there wasn't even a book there right now. Where had their friend gone to? Robin knew his team was slowly falling into depression, and opened his mouth to assign the next round of searching.

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Raven emerged into the common room, finding sanctuary there. At least it was a _little_ less dark. Her throat dry and parched, she found herself automatically going to the refrigerator. (**A/N**: _To those who've never had a good cry… many people are thirsty after such a thing. With your throat so tight while weeping, the moisture gets squeezed out._) "Like there would be anything there…?" She'd peered into it earlier, but hadn't taken notice of what was there. She reached and opened it, but found nothing. She wanted water so badly, but could think of nothing. She flicked the faucet of the sink on, but received no water. Sighing in disappointment, she went and sat on the love seat. She briefly thought to go outside and drink from the bay, but that was salt water… she would be sick. "I doubt I can get out of the tower now anyway…" she said bitterly. "Well… what next?" She thought long and hard. "Beast Boy hid all the symbols… he gave one to Starfire and Cyborg… that makes three…" she ticked off her friend's names on her fingers. "Nine symbols left… where else would Beast Boy hide something… where's the perfect place to hide…?" Raven's eyes suddenly widened in realization. It was perfect. The perfect place to hide something because no one ever dared to go in there. "_My room._" Raven whispered, standing.

Raven traveled quickly in the stairwell, not bothering to listen for the whispers. Beast Boy would've braved her room only because she wasn't there, she knew. Raven wondered why she'd been gone, but didn't think it mattered and kept moving. Her cloak flared dramatically behind her and she emerged into the proper floor's hallway. Getting the flashlight out, she made her way down the hall. She stopped at the door marked with her name, taking a few deep breaths. Beast Boy and Cyborg's rooms had been a mess, and Starfire's had been a real nightmare… what would she find in a room that was _supposed_ to be dark and scary? Having no other choice, Raven slid the door open.

Shining the flashlight into the darkness, she looked around. It looked as though someone had ransacked her bookshelf, but otherwise it was _fine_. Raven had seen her books in various rooms along her journey, so she wasn't too disturbed to find most of them gone. Her fiction books remained untouched, and she found them dusty. No one had touched them in ages. _Just like everything else_, she reminded herself. Even the T-car had been old-looking and dusty. She looked slowly around the room, searching the walls first. There were no binding symbols drawn anywhere… no slashes in the walls or holes in the floor… But her bed was unmade. Her brow furrowing, Raven went to it and felt the covers. They were old and ratty, but still there. "He didn't…" Raven suddenly thought of where a symbol might be hidden. She threw back the covers, tossing the two pillows and pulling the elastic sheet off of her bed. The mattress lay exposed, along with something more. A tiny little white book was there. "My diary…" Raven whispered.

She didn't write in it very often, but found it to be a good stress reliever and silent listener. She sat on the bed, listening to the bedsprings whine. Picking up the familiar book she opened it and shined the flashlight in it. It was hers alright. The first five pages were full of death threats to whoever tried to read it… and then the actual diary part. But wait… there was something sticking out of the pages. Raven knew she didn't keep a bookmark in her own diary, and flipped to where she felt it. It was a faded, torn sticky note.

_Forgive me, Raven. I love you._

It was Beast Boy's handwriting. Raven gasped at the 'I love you.' Even when she had been gone, he'd been a little frightened of her… he'd braved into her room and her diary to hide something important. There was something behind the sticky note. Raven peeled it away, revealing a date that had long passed months ago. It was the entry on the battle with Plasmus at the waste disposal plant. That was so long ago… But, there was something scribbled over it in big, bold crayon. Beast Boy's black crayons had made another symbol for her to find, right over her very own handwriting.

It was a perfect square, heavy with a waxy feeling that sort of made Raven queasy. Under the square was a perfectly made plus sign, attached at the precise halfway point of the bottom line of the square. She reached to touch it, and it glowed in a rainbow like the ones before it. She'd found the forth symbol. Looking for the lyric to join it, Raven turned a few pages. She reached the end of where her entries were, and spotted a poem.

* * *

**F**or every time I've tried to make you g**R**in,

I've wish**E**d that you would smile and be happy agai**N**.

For I've seen you dressed **I**n sacred white,

Beating evil down for a **C**ause… and solving humanity's plight.

* * *

Had Beast Boy written that? Yes… it was _his_ handwriting, but it was in **black crayon**. Why were some of those letters capitalized and bolder than most… Raven spoke the letters as she went, "F… R… E… N… I… C…? _Frenic_?" She sounded it out. She'd found the lyric in the poem! Suddenly, as though listening to her, the rest of the poem vanished, leave only the letters to the word she sought:

**FRENIC** (Free-nick)

How on earth…? Raven squinted when a glow made itself known in her shoe. Sighing and setting her diary to one side, she pulled her shoe off. The symbol of Frenic was blazed into her left foot. "Great… _my hands and feet match now_." She put her shoe back on, warily looking at her diary. Sighing, she placed it carefully back in its hiding place. Not bothering to neatly make the bed, she merely covered it with the blankets and threw the pillows back on the bed.

With the symbols for Lussa and Kars on her hands… and with Oliviak and Frenic on her feet… Raven went to the door again. She heaved a sigh, looking around the room. Her room had been left mostly untouched… _odd_. Trying not worry herself with why, Raven stepped out into the hallway again.

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It had been almost five hours since the search had started. Beast Boy was in the shower. He stood with his head bowed under the water. Where had Raven gone to…? It pounded in his mind over and over again. Starfire had searched her room, the vents were clean, Robin had been to the training room, Cyborg had checked all the main storage areas…

They were beginning to run out of rooms. Many red X's were on the blueprints of Titan's tower. They'd checked the basement earlier… just not as thoroughly. Oh well. That room was still on the list, so they were bound to get to it sooner or later. The green teen found himself sitting, looking down at himself. He… _he liked Raven_. He'd admitted this to himself openly today. He didn't tell any of the others, though. Sure, he was a teenager and he'd had his share of heated dreams… but he was starting to like Raven because she was… well, _Raven_. "Heh… forbidden fruit." He whispered. That's what she was, he knew. He liked her a lot, but she seemed to distance herself from everything… to keep herself from accidentally hurting others with her powers. Sitting down under the spray he let the hot water massage his back, but it brought no comfort. Beast Boy drew his legs up to his bare chest, burying his face in his arms. "Raven…" he whispered softly. A drop of salt water dripped onto the shower floor, flying down the drain with the rest of it. "Where are you…?" his voice had cracked with emotion.

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Raven heaved a sigh, puffing her cheeks and sitting on the love-seat in the common room. It was dank and dismal, but it was still where she sat everyday to read. Finding that to be a small comfort, she sat there to rest for a moment. She closed her eyes, leaning back for a moment. Just to sit there breathing felt like a blessing.

_A large, gloved hand grabbed her shoulder._

Raven screamed, throwing herself to her feet and wrenching away. "Buh… _Beast Boy_?" She gasped. It was none other than the green changling to the rescue! He smiled at her.

"Hey Rae, how's it going?" He joked, looking around the deserted common room.

"Really _crappy_. How did you get here?" She asked.

"Not important." He snubbed her pretty quickly, but quickly kept speaking. "C'mon, we gotta get outta here." Raven nodded, and she turned to lead the way to the staircase. Beast Boy's eyes flared red, and he grabbed her from behind. She yelped as they struggled back and forth, crashing one on top of the other on the couch. "Love ya, Rae-rae." He gave a greasy smile, straddled over her. Raven squirmed furiously as he pulled one of his gloves off. Raven had never seen his hands, and she gasped when the glove came away. On the end of each of Beast Boy's fingers was a wickedly curved claw.

"_Get off me_!" Raven cried, fighting and throwing her weight around. He grabbed her wrists and held them above her head. His face was inches from hers, and he grinned again. The friction between them was absolutely _sinful_, causing Raven to moan pitifully. Tears of distress poured from her eyes as she realized what his intentions were.His teeth were suddenly a horrible yellow, thousands of tiny onesin his mouth. His voice changed when he spoke.

"Love you, Rae-rae." He laughed darkly, his claw scratching her under the chin. Raven whimpered aloud, fighting as hard as she could. It was no use. Her hands were caught in just one of his, and he was on top of her. She was going _nowhere_. Her breathing was in quick, fretful gasps as his claw pulled at her collar.

"Beast Boy… no…" Raven moaned. Her outfit began to tear, right down the middle. His pointer-finger's claw was slicing the fabric like a knife, exposing her pale skin. "Don't… _please_…" tears were in Raven's eyes as Beast Boy's flashed red again. The soft ripping sound continued until the claw was suddenly halted.

"_Eh_?" Beast Boy's claw had been caught on something metallic between Raven's breasts.

Raven seized the opportunity and shouted right in his face. "_Oliviak_!" Beast Boy vanished in a flash of light and smoke, leaving Raven on the couch alone. She lay there, breathing… feeling violated in a way that only females can understand. Sitting up and holding her head in her hands, she tried to calm her breathing. She'd almost been… she couldn't even _think_ the word. "Beast Boy would never do that…" Raven whispered, assuring herself. "And Starfire wouldn't do what she did in this world either…" she remembered what she'd seen in the mirror, shuddering. Raven looked down between her breasts and pulled out Starfire's locket. _That's_ what had stopped the demon's claws from ripping her outfit completely off. "Thanks, Starfire…" she whispered, opening the locket. Starfire smiled happily up at her from the picture, but… the word _Oliviak_ was gone, replaced with Robin's picture. "Mmm…" Raven said warily. She'd used another symbol. Well, she still had Frenic left. The others she'd already used would have to be one more time during the final recitation… however that was supposed to be done. Raven tried not to think of the end, and focused on the present.

She approached the large window of the common room, looking at her torn outfit. The golden chain of Starfire's locket was in view, along with her modestly small cleavage. Raven blushed at her reflection. She wasn't used to having so much skin showing, especially _there_. "Well… I guess no one's around to see me…" she mumbled, tearing the flaps that the fake Beast Boy had created off. This left Raven with a leotard that looked like a very revealing V-neck. She blushed more deeply, rubbing her upper arm and trying to get the feel of the fake Titan off of her skin. "No one's coming to help me." Raven said firmly. "I've gotta do this on my own." Trying not to think of how exposed she felt right then, Raven sat to think again. "This _thing_ is getting more desperate…" she murmured. "I don't know how long I'll be able to –!"

_The phone rang._

Raven jumped, whirling around. The cord-phone on the wall in the kitchen was ringing. But… the power was out… wait, weren't phone lines separate from electrical lines? Or were they? She didn't know, but rose to answer it. It could be another trick… it could be a trap… but, the phone was ringing, and all phones had be answered eventually. Licking her dry lips, Raven picked it up off the receiver, placing it near her ear. "H… _Hello_?" she whispered.

"_It knows what you're doing. You should **leave**_." It was _Robin_. Raven made to say his name, but she heard whispers in the background. Raven turned paler than usual. _It wasn't Robin_, but his voice was being used. "_Your lover-boy is here with us, y'know. You might** join him** soon._" The line very suddenly went dead. Raven stared at the phone itself.

"Not like I could leave anytime I want to… It's just trying to scare me…" Raven whispered, knowing he was talking about Beast Boy. "That wasn't Robin." She suddenly looked defiantly around the room, as though it were a hidden-camera show. "**That wasn't Robin**!" Raven shouted into the darkness. She wrapped the cord around her arm in a sudden fit of anger, and _tore the phone out of the wall_! Pieces of drywall came away and the receiver broke into pieces along the tile of the kitchen floor. Raven stood over it, gasping for air. Kicking it for good measure, she turned back to the common room. "Looks like its boy blunder's room next." She whispered. "Come get me, whatever the hell you are." She squared her shoulders, making her way to the staircase. She felt like a lone gunman, with only one bullet left. The bullet's name was _Frenic_… and the gunfight wasn't over yet. After a long silence she turned to look at the phone…

…_it was back on the wall, as though nothing had happened._

* * *

_That's part five! Cool huh? I thought the phone was a nice touch, personally… But, let me know what you think. Raven heads to Robin's room next, although we haven't seen much of it in the series… We caught a glimpse of it in "The Quest," but I don't remember seeing it in any other episodes… Oh well. I'll make something up, ya? Please follow along, and review me if you have time! Thankies!_


	6. Morcana

_Here I am again for Raven's Game! Is everyone enjoying the show? Nice and scary? Good! To recap, there will be **no Trigon** appearance in this one. Frankly, I think he's overused in fan fictions involving Raven nowadays. My shadow… creature… thingy… doesn't **have** a name. So there. Keep reading, because now we're going to search Robin's room!_

* * *

Raven's Game 

Part 6: **Morcana**

"Cyborg, what rooms are left?" Robin said warily. The tower was large, but they were running out of places to look for any signs of their gothic friend.

"Uhm…" Cyborg thought for a moment. "None man. The only room we haven't turned upside down is–"

"_The basement_." Beast Boy said, arriving at last to the common room. The others turned and looked at him. He looked… different. His eyes looked as though he'd just overcome tears with anger, and it was fresh in his mind. "We went down there to see if she was there earlier, but we didn't search it all like we did the other rooms." Beast Boy pointed to the basement on the schematic. "There's all kinds of ventilation shafts that only open during certain times of day down there, right?" Cyborg nodded, having built them himself. "Maybe she got caught in one of them, and is down there waiting for us."

Robin nodded, but Starfire looked a little scared. "Okay, Titans. We're going to the basement again." They got up and took the elevator down… down… down… the doors opened and they stepped into the hallway. "Careful, you guys. There's a lot of stairs." Robin opened the large basement door. It whined loudly, and they started down the stairs…

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Raven stood in front of Robin's room. Heaving a sigh and ready to speak the word Frenic at the slightest sign of movement… she stepped in. Flicking the flashlight on, she saw that there wasn't much to Robin's room at all. It seemed to be strictly functional. A bed, a closet, and a window. It was pretty much bare. Raven went and opened the closet. She found a row of old, moth-eaten uniforms dangling from ancient hangers. Pushing the mirrored sliding door all the way open, Raven saw the row of masks… the rows of his gadgets, all of them the same.

One of Raven's eyebrows quirked. Robin carried _weapons_… She reached with her free hand and pulled a utility belt out. It was bright yellow… but it probably had some useful things in it. "I've got quite a collection going…" Raven murmured, a small smile coming to her face. She reached and slowly pulled her decorative gem belt off. She placed it in the place where she'd taken Robin's belt, feeling as though it were an even trade. "This thing is so old, though… wonder if it works." Raven gently put it around her waist, clicking it closed. "Mmm…" she reached and pushed a button at random. Robin's bow-stick jumped into view. She held it out in front of herself, quirking an eyebrow. "I don't know how to use this thing…" she muttered, closing it up again and shoving it back to where it had popped out.

She tried another button, and a series of pellets dropped into her hand like marbles. "_Those_ I can use…" Raven actually smiled. She didn't dare throw one since they exploded on a violent impact, but stored them back in the belt itself. She sat there for a long time, going through the gizmos that Robin carried with him. The teenage girl deposited the ones she couldn't use or didn't have the skill to use on his bed, leaving the belt much lighter than when it had started. "_There_." She murmured, looking satisfied. "My powers don't work… but I'm _armed_ now." She glared at nothing from under her eyebrows, a dark grin coming to her face.

She thoroughly searched Robin's room for any symbols… but found none. She even moved the bed and dresser with great difficulty so she could see the walls behind them. Robin didn't have one. Which made sense, Raven supposed. He didn't believe the others were telling the truth about the shadow-thing, so they wouldn't have trusted him with a part of their salvation. "Well…" Raven murmured. "At least I won't leave the room empty-handed." She looked down at the utility belt, a small smile on her face. Picking up the flashlight from the bed, she turned to leave. "I better–" Raven stopped for a moment, holding her abdomen. She blushed slightly. "Use the bathroom…" she murmured. Even if the water didn't work, Raven had to relieve herself sooner or later. She had to pee, _right then_.

Raven walked quickly to the nearest bathroom to Robin's room. Closing the door out of pure habit, she lowered the seat of the toilet and sat down. She hummed quietly to herself as she… _uhm_… (A/N: _I'm not gonna go into huge detail on this, so just use your imagination on that_. _I just needed a way to take her into the bathroom for the story... so at least **ATTEMPT** to keep your mind out the gutter, okay?_) When she was done she stood again, standing in front of the mirror to wash her hands. "Oh yeah… no water…" Raven muttered, a little annoyed. She leaned forward, her forehead on the mirror and her hands on the sink. "This is getting annoying…" she said. "No power, no water, and a _phone that's possessed_. What the hell's next…?" She sighed, her breath steaming the mirror. "Why don't I just march down into the basement right now and fix the… huh?" Raven looked at where her breath had caught on the mirror. "Was that…?" She squinted, leaning forward and intentionally breathing on the mirror. A little cloud of steam stuck to the mirror, but parts of the mirror didn't steam up! "What the…?" she licked her lips, then breathed on the mirror several times to steam up a large area. Raven stared at what she had discovered, then saw the open stick of deodorant on the sink. She picked up the deodorant, then looked at the mirror. "Clever, Beast Boy." She was shocked to hear herself say '_clever'_ and _'Beast Boy'_ in the same sentence, but her words were true. She breathed on the mirror again… _exposing the fifth symbol_. Beast Boy must've drawn it there with deodorant, making it completely invisible. Until the mirror steamed up, that is.

The symbol looked like the number two with a line traveling downward through its tail. That made it look a little like a fancy number four with a little twist on the end. Raven looked at it, watching the steam fade again. "Let me guess…" she murmured, looking down at herself. She waited a long time, but nothing happened. She looked herself up and down, wondering why. No symbol had appeared… "Oh wait, I need the lyric." She said. "And if Beast Boy hid this one too…" she reached and opened the medicine cabinet that the symbol's mirror was on. "Yep." Raven said, looking at the inside of the door of the cabinet. There, scratched down in black crayons, was the word:

**MORCANA** (More-cahn-uh)

"Morcana…" Raven whispered, waiting for the glowing light somewhere on her body. _Her cloak was suddenly slashed down the middle in the back_! She cried out, spinning around. No one was there. A beam of light, however, was shining off of her back. "What the…?" Raven saw it bounce off the mirror and project itself to the ceiling. The symbol for Morcana had appeared on her lower back, right along her spinal chord. "Well… it could've been tattooed on my butt." Raven shrugged, still not happy her cloak had been torn. Looking at herself in the mirror, she shook her head and frowned. The makeshift V-neck and torn cloak made her look… _bad_. "I'm gonna be naked by the time this is over if I'm not careful." She made a stab at a joke, but got no laughs from herself. Beast Boy would've laughed at that… she shook her head. She had to worry about herself right now.

Raven removed her cloak, ripping it the rest of the way. Now, whenever she ran, it would look as though she had two dark blue wings. _Fitting for a raven_, she thought as she refastened her garment. Reslinging the purse on her shoulder and the clicking utility belt around her waist, she braved out into the hallway. Looking both ways and listening for trouble, Raven made her way back to the common room. Why? She didn't know. Inspiration seemed to strike her when she sat there, even if it was dark and dusty right then.

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"Man, there ain't nothin' here either." Cyborg grumped, sitting on a crate. He rested his chin on a fist, looking around at the ransacked basement. Heaving a sigh, he looked over just in time to see Beast Boy emerge from an aisle of shelves. His hair was more mussed than usual, and there were little bags under his eyes. "Hey BB… you okay…?"

"Uhn…" Beast Boy sat on a nearby crate, massaging his eyes. "Yeah dude. I'm just…" he fought a yawn, scratching the back of his head. "A little… tired…"

They'd been searching for Raven for almost twelve hours, and it was nearly three in the morning. Starfire came to join them from where she'd been searching. "Friends… I am… quite tired." She looked wilted like a flower that had received no water. Barely able to hover in the air she sat on the floor, leaning against a crate. "Friend Raven has effectively eluded us, I am afraid." She murmured, leaning back to rest her eyes. "Friend Robin has only a bit more of his assigned area to search, then he should join us as well." She murmured, looking halfway asleep already.

Sure enough, Robin came around just then and joined them. "Any luck, team?" he asked, pinching the bridge of his nose to suppress the headache that had been plaguing him. Because they'd been searching everywhere, Robin had been going through all the Slade artifacts that had been recovered over time. That had left him in a rather sour mood, but he didn't have energy to show it.

"We would have more luck with the 'hay in the needle stack,' I believe." Starfire moaned, not even bothering to move. Robin surveyed his team, weighing the odds of reactions if he pushed them any further. "Friend Robin, we should rest and continue our search tomorrow…" she whispered, sighing with fatigue.

There was a short silence, and Robin made his decision. "Okay. Cyborg? You and Beast Boy search a little longer. Starfire, you go on to bed. I'm gonna grab something to eat, and I'll bring it back to share with you guys, okay?" The team groaned collectively. "Search for one more hour, and we'll take a nine hour break, okay?" he gave them the best offer he thought he could afford. "Starfire…" he said her name, but the poor pooped redhead was already curled to sleep on the cold concrete. Robin sighed, gathering her into his arms. He carried her up the basement stairs and out of sight.

Cyborg and Beast Boy looked at each other. "Oh sure, his _girlfriend_ gets the break,." Cyborg grumbled.

"Don't start, dude." Beast Boy said in a monotone that reminded Cyborg of Raven. That made his frown deepen. "We've searched the entire tower except for the timed vents below the basement, what more does he want all in one day…?"

Robin carried Starfire as gently as he could, all the way to her room. Pushing the door slowly open with his foot, he crossed the room to her bed. "There we go…" he set her down for a moment, pausing to pull the covers of the bed back. Then, he slowly lifted her into bed. Pulling the covers to her chin, he looked at her. She was so… _peaceful_ while she was sleeping. The seemingly boundless energy of the Tameranian had reached its end, though. She needed rest, just like the others. He'd only pushed the other two for more because he thought they could take it. They'd be sour with him for letting Starfire rest, but they'd get over it faster…

Robin looked at Starfire's peaceful expression, his heart softening. Well… maybe he _wouldn't_ make the others search anymore tonight. They'd all been looking for most of the day, stopping only briefly every few hours to recap, eat, shower, and whatever other bodily needs had to be seen to. "Robin… _ohhh_…." Starfire moaned his name in her sleep. She curled to one side, a light blush on her cheeks. Robin felt himself redden, pushing a strand of hair back behind her ear. She was so beautiful… Another soft moan escaped her, and she curled tighter into the covers. He touched her face, stroking her cheek only once before withdrawing. Now wasn't the time for stuff like _that_… Standing straight up, he quietly closed the door and walked down the hall. Flipping open his communicator, he called Cyborg and Beast Boy. "Guys, why don't we stop for the–"

"_Robin_!" it was Beast Boy shouting on the other end of the line. "There's someone down there! Inside Cyborg's timed vents!" The boy wonder ran as fast as his tired body would let him, and arrived at the basement with all speed. "It's over here…" Beast Boy pointed.

Cyborg had his ultra-ear deployed, and had it pressed to the wall near one of the vents. "I can't really make anything out, man. It's too far away." He stood at last, and Robin closed the distance so he might hear something too. "I thought we could try to listen through the walls for activity, but all we heard were these…" he thought for a moment, trying to find the right word. "We heard _whispers_." He said gravely. "There's someone in there, but I don't think its Raven."

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Raven sat in the common room, resting for the moment. She didn't dare let herself sleep, for fear the darkness would consume her without warning. So, she passed the time to rest herself by doing what she did best. _Reading_. She sat on the dusty old love seat in the usual Indian-style position, Beast Boy's diary in her lap. She'd started at the beginning, and read more than thirty pages so far. "Mmm…" she said, turning the page.

The book went into greater detail as to the adventures that the Titans had shared, ones that Raven remembered. She learned of his distress when Cyborg had quit the Titans. She saw through his eyes the day that Robin had been revealed to be red X. Raven experienced the world through Beast Boy's eyes, reading as though she were listening to him speak. His voice appeared in the back of her head, reading along as she went. She began to notice, little by little, his growing affection for… well… _herself_. His mindless jokes and quirks aimed at her had all been stabs at affection, only to be turned away each time. There were even several pages labeled 'plans to make Raven smile.' Each plan was more outrageous than the last, and Raven knew from personal experience that each and every one had been tried. Did he really spend so much time thinking about _her_…? Her violet eyes raced back and forth across the page, pausing now and then to mentally correct his horrible spelling… or reading his odd handwriting. Now and then there would be a string of words sort of mashed together, and she would take a few moments to seperate them all.

She suddenly came to an oddly scrawled entry in the diary, and she read that one more slowly than the others. It seemed to tell about when all the stuff that had happened started…

_Dear Diary, Raven went missing today! We gotta find her! Me and the others spent like twelve hours turning the tower upside down today… but we couldn't find her. It's like four in the morning, but I don't care. I can't sleep with her gone. Did she leave us? Why? I don't think she would, dude. We searched the basement extra-long, turning out all the boxes and junk. I dunno why Robin wanted us to do that. It was nothing but dust, Christmas decorations, and Slade stuff… then we heard something in one of Cyborg's timed vents. I asked him why it was called a timed vent, and he said it was because they only open twice a day. I forgot when he said, but it's like once every twelve hours. They open up to ventilate old air out of the tower, and let new in. I guess its like opening the windows in spring for fresh air, except this is year round._

Timed valves? Raven had never known about them. But then again, she hadn't been around when the tower was being built. Raven bit her lip, wondering how safe it was to stay in one place for very long. She hadn't heard the whispering anywhere, so… she was safe for the moment. Pulling her hood down so she could see better, Raven went on with the same entry.

_Anyway, Starfire got tired out and Robin went and tucked her in bed. They should move in together or something, as obvious as they are… I wonder if she really fell asleep on the floor, or if she was just doing that so he'd carry her? Well, she did look pretty tired… Cyborg and me stayed in the basement, and we heard something in the wall. Near the shafts of the timed vents,Cyborg said. We listened real hard to be sure before we called Robin. It sounded almost like… whispers._

Raven shuddered, shutting the book with a snap. She'd rested long enough. It was time to move again. Whatever had happened at the tower, Raven knew it was up to her to stop it. If she ever wanted to see the others… _Beast Boy_… again…

* * *

_Well, it looks like Beast Boy's diary is telling events as they happen in the real world while Raven struggles against the darkness in the game world! I had no idea this fic would get so much praise from others, so thank you all for following this so far… (smile) Raven has recovered **five** symbols, and there are **seven** to go! Plus, what happened to the vellum Beast Boy's diary spoke of? Will Raven find it? I suppose we'll have to find out later! Please review if you have the time, and let me know any ideas you have to make this fic nice and scary! I know I kind of strayed into romance for a moment… sorry… let's get back to the **horror**_! 


	7. Tyma

Here we are for part seven of Raven's game! With five of the twelve symbols recovered from where Beast Boy had hid them, Raven's read through parts of his diary… and finds that he was falling in love with her. Meanwhile, in the real world, the Titans search futilely for Raven all through the tower. In the basement, Cyborg's sonic ear picks up whispers in the timed vents… And after the recap I say I don't own Teen Titans and on with the show!

* * *

Raven was searching the common room again. She just freaking _knew_ there had to be a symbol there somewhere. She'd already searched the gamestation, all their movies and CDs. So, this time she started searching the kitchen area.

Carefully emptying every cabinet of dusty, cracked plates and other things, she set them out on the counter as she went. Warily eyeing the nearby phone, Raven emptied the silverware drawer as well. Most of them were rusted or even broken in half with age… but they were of little concern. Pulling out another drawer, she emptied it as well. Slow, careful motions of her hands displayed everything the kitchen had to offer with careful order. All the plates were stacked, the silverware in a pile, mixing bowls over there… moldy old paper towels over there. Grunting with frustration, Raven even yanked the clock off the wall. "It's not even working…" she said, very annoyed she hadn't found anything yet. Using a screwdriver she'd found for replacing batteries in things that needed to be unscrewed, she opened the panel in the back of the little round clock.

_A little green slip of paper fell out, and Raven's heart leapt._

She snatched it before it even hit the ground, setting the clock on the dead stove. It was folded twice, construction paper, and it had bled-throughink on it. Licking her dry lips she unfolded it. Was it another symbol, left behind by Beast Boy? Hoping for the best, she looked at the paper when it was all the way unfolded… and frowned.

**_There are no batteries in this clock, so what does it lack besides 'atock?'_**

What the hell was _that_ supposed to mean? The panel that was supposed to house the clock's batteries were, in fact, empty. That's where the note had been stored, but… what was this? Some kind of _riddle_? Raven went, taking the clock with her, sat on the love seat in the living room area again. Pushing her hood back, she looked at the clock. It was round and white, regular block numbers. Stictly functional, it was the same clock they'd had forever. There nothing special about it, maybe a twelve dollar purchase. She suddenly noticed the words 'a tock' were mashed together, and frowned again. If this clock was off, it was lacking **_ticks_** as well as tocks. But, what did that tell her? "A _tick_? Okay Beast Boy… what're trying to tell me…?" she whispered, looking from the riddle to the clock itself. Using the screwdriver, she dismantled the rest of the clock, but found no more clues. The little note was all she had to go by. There was some kind of trick to the words… she could tell… what was it? 'atock?' Raven thought for a long time. "Where are you pointing me to, elf boy…?" Raven whispered. She sat there, staring at the carefully written note. "The a tick?" she mumbled. She suddenly gave a start. "The _a tick_!" she stood straight up, surprised at how simple the answer was. "There's a symbol in the **_attic_**!" Feeling rather proud of herself and her book-fed intelligence, she swept her torn cloak dramatically as she ran to the stairwell. 'Clever… _Beast Boy_…' she thought silently, still not used to having those three words together.

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"They should open in three… two… one…" Cyborg counted down, and the vent they were standing in front of swung open. "There, see? No sweat!" It was the next day, but you couldn't tell because it was still raining. He and Beast Boy were already in the vent shaft, and the hidden vent had popped open like a hidden door. Right before their very eyes, a new path was shown to them. "It'll stay open for about ten minutes, so we gotta look quick or we'll be trapped in here, okay?"

"Check." Beast Boy said. He'd gotten very little sleep, and his spirits were as low as ever. Whatever voices they were hearing in the vent, he somehow doubted it was Raven's. It was too… reptilian. Like a whispering snake, heard through the walls… "I'm goin' bat!" Beast Boy announced his transformation and took off into the darkness in front of him. The metallic walls didn't go very far, and then began a system of caves and catacombs. God knew where they let out, but Cyborg used them as ventilation for the Tower, in case they should need it or ever be under such great attack as to need it to flee.

Cyborg's shoulder-light popped up, flicking on and casting a beam of brightness into shadow. Quickly walking since they were on a time-limit, he searched this way… then that… there didn't seem to be any wildlife. "Mmm…" he didn't like dark, untamed areas. Being a man of technology, it often meant unseen threats for him. He walked among stalagmites, carefully checking his footing. But… why did it seem like he was walking along a _path_? Had someone been there earlier…? Nah, that was stupid. It was a dark old cave, and the smooth ground was probably where water used to flow. "BB?" he asked into the darkness.

A little green bat landed, turning back into the humanoid version or Beast Boy. "You gotta come see this, Dude! Its _huge_!" He danced back and forth, then started tugging Cyborg along by his arm. Giving in to the tugging they ran onward. "I couldn't see it real well since bat's got echolocation, but this isn't any cave spike _I've_ ever seen!"

"They're called _stalagmites_, dude. Those are what the ones on the floor ar–" he came to a stuttering halt. They'd reached what Beast Boy had found at the far end of the cavern. It was huge and circular, a real skull in the middle. It looked like a giant, round, stone coin. "What the…" Cyborg whispered, casting his light slowly across it. There was even writing on it, under all the spider webs.

"See? _Told ya_!" Beast Boy proclaimed.

"_Heeeeenooooooosaaaaakiaaaaa_…." It was soft, but it vibrated the air around them. Both boys froze in shock and fear. Was someone down there with them?

"Hello?" Cyborg asked into shadow. He got no response, and they went closer to the enormous stone. It looked kind of like a giant coin or maybe a disk, stood up on its side and blocking that which was behind it. "_Hello_?" Cyborg tried again.

"Dude… I'm getting' a really bad vibe here…" Beast Boy was slowly backing away. He looked up at the giant stone Cyborg was beginning to examine. There were twelve symbols all around the edges, and they seemed to… did that first one seem to _glitter_? He looked closer, but it had either stopped or it had been his imagination. The skull in the middle was giving him the creeps, and he wasn't about to stick around for this kind of stuff. "Cyborg… let's get outta here, dude." He whispered. "Isn't that vent thing gonna close soon?"

Cyborg didn't answer, and was pressing his ear against. There was something just past the stone slab… moving around… "I think I'm gonna take a sample for later." He said, his hand becoming a corkscrew-drill. "We can leave after this." He pressed it gently to the ancient stone, and it chewed into it about five inches.

All twelve symbols glowed, directly above him. Beast Boy chewed his fingernails, dancing around like he had to pee. "Uhm… _Cyborg_?" he squeaked. "You probably shouldn't do that…"

"What's the harm in it?" he asked, not really paying attention. "I wannd analyze this later and see how old it is. Who knows, it might be really valuable!" The symbols, just beyond his sight, were pulsing almost angrily at him.

"Dude…" BB's voice was even higher and squeakier. "You _really_ shouldn't be doing that…"

"Aw, c'mon Beast Boy." Cyborg said, squinting as he gently withdrew the sample. It was a little cylinder of stone, perfectly shaped thanks to his special drill.

_All twelve symbols on the stone slabcaught fire._

Beast Boy screamed in horror, running for his life. Cyborg looked up, a massive sweat-drop going down the back of his head. "Aw _maaaaaan_!" he started running as the stone began to come apart above him! "**_Gangwaaaaaay_**!" the metal man took off as pieces started falling from the ceiling as well. He ran back, finding the metal parts of the outer vent. Beast Boy had run through right before him, and it was closing. Cursing loudly he threw himself through! The closing vent shot sparks as he passed, scraping his metallic body. He landed, sample still in hand, on top of Beast Boy. The vent hissed shut behind him, and they heard the distant rumbling of the stone slab coming apart. "Musta been unstable…"

"Gerrof me, dude!" Beast Boy gagged, crushed by the larger Titan.

"Oh, sorry…" he quickly stood, showing Beast Boy the little cylinder of stone. "Well we got this at least."

"_**Raven**_ wasn't down there either, though." Beast Boy hotly reminded him of their mission. "That's what we gotta focus on, dude. Not some old _rock_." He snatched the stone from Cyborg, stomping away.

"Hey! That's _mine_!" he gave chase.

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Raven emerged into the attic via the pull-down stairs. She'd been on the _roof_ plenty times to meditate, but… she couldn't recall this room at all. She'd been right above it the whole time. The very air she breathed was dusty, and a little cloud of disturbed dust followed her feet wherever they went. The room itself was huge, but there was so much random stuff to go through… "Okay… where would I hide it if I were Beast Boy…?" she murmured, slowly surveying the whole place.

There were old wooden chairs, Cyborg's outdated tech, alien artifacts that Starfire decided she didn't want in her room, Robin's supposedly secret box of dirty magazines… Beast Boy had left her quite a mess to sort out. Things even hung from the ceiling on strings. Was that a lightbulb…? Oh yeah, no power… Raven took out the flashlight and flicked it on. Shining the beam of light all around, she looked for any sign of a recent disturbance. A place with less dust than the rest of the room… Raven knew the titans rarely came up here for anything at all, but even if Beast Boy had been there a month ago, she'd be able to tell from the lack of dust… _somewhere_… Raven spotted a suite case, and saw hand prints in the dust around it. Nodding once, she made her way over to it and pulled it into a more open area.

She made to pull it open, but to no avial. It was _locked_. Who the hell needed locks on a bag to keep clothes in! Raven cursed softly under her breath, looking at the twin key locks. "I bet the key is long gone…" she murmured, rooting around in Starfire's purse for help. A magnifying glass, Beast Boy's diary, a pen, some paper… and the screwdriver she'd decided to keep. Arching an eyebrow she took out the screwdriver and knelt down so she could see better. Setting the purse and flashlight to one side so she could work with both hands, she inserted the tip of the screwdriver into the first lock. "Gently… _gently_…" she struck the butt of the screwdriver hard, breaking the old lock apart. Nodding in satisfaction, she did the same to the second lock. Pulling the screwdriver away and storing it in the purse, she picked up the flashlight again. Pulling it open, she found something she'd never expected.

_It was full of children's books._

Frowning, she looked the whole thing over. Why would you lock a set of children's books in a suite case? She saw 'Hanzel and Gretel,' 'Jack and the Beanstalk,' 'Cinderella,' 'Sleeping Beauty,' and a few others… "Huh?" Raven saw a book that didn't seem to belong with the others. She wiped the dust away to reveal the title, '**_The War of the Worlds_**.' Raven snorted at the irony, knowing that was the one she wanted. It was quite a bit older, and the pages were yellowed. **H.G. Wells,** the author was. She flipped it open to a part that had pages stuck in.

_Dear Raven,_

_If you're reading this, it means I messed up and it got us all. I'm sorry. I tried to call you in time, but I must've been too late. It's super-powerful now, Raven. If it got all four of us, that means you're the only one left who can win against it. Since you're here, you've probably found some other symbols by now, right? Keep going, Rae. After you read this letter, you'll have the sixth symbol in the string. I thought for a long time to make sure you'd find them in order, but I couldn't think of anything._

_So, I hid a piece of vellum… its **animal skin**, in the evidence room. Go find it, and you'll find the right order to put the symbols in. You'll find its exact location with the last symbol you find. I broke it into pieces so the shadow-thing wouldn't find it and… I dunno… eat it or something. __I'm so sorry I failed, Raven. Really. Cyborg and me set it free… and now you have to finish what we started. I'm counting on you._

_Love,_

_Beast Boy_

Raven eyed the closing remark, _love_. Dark dots were all over the page, though. _Tears_? Had he truly hidden this note specifically for her to find…? She flipped to the second page that had been stuck into the book.

_The lyric that goes with this symbol is **Tyma**, Raven. Knock 'em dead. _

Raven found the lyric in the last line of Beast Boy's hand writing, and the rest of the page was taken up with yet another scratching in black crayon. It looked like a lowercase 'th.' But, the end of the "H" curled a little, and the cross of the "T" invaded the h's vertical line. It glittered blightly, making Raven squint. When it faded back to normal, Raven's back arched hard! She cried out as a dulling pain made itself known in the small of her back. Staggering into a standing position, she doubled over and felt her back.

She felt the rise in her skin through her outfit, the symbol of Tyma. It had boldened itself on her back, not too far above where Morcana was. "Gotcha…" Raven whispered, straightening at last. Slamming the suite case shut and leaving the letter inside, she gently pushed it back into the corner where it belonged. She heard the books shift, and finally stood all the way up. Raven turned to leave and jolted to a stop.

_There was a person hanging from the rafters by a rope, swaying slowly back and forth._

That hadn't been there before, she was sure of it. Raven forced down the shudder that she felt rising in her. Pursing her lips for a moment and ready to rapid-fire two symbols at once, she spoke up. "Who is it this time? _Robin_?" she fast approached it, a defiant look on her face. "I'm halfway there and you've only got _two more people_ to taunt me with!" she shouted, turning the person around so she could see who it was. The flesh was rotten and smelled horrible, but she'd be able to tell who it was. Raven saw the face and cried out in terror!

_**She was looking at** **herself**, **an overturned chair directly below where she hung**._

* * *

_**Eeeek**! That's the end of part seven! I hope you're having fun with this, because I sure am! Any suggestions for the locations of the next symbols would be appreciated, because I'm kinda making this up as I go along! Join me next time for part eight, **Malus**!_


	8. Malus

_Let's get right back to it! I left everybody hanging last time! I don't own Teen Titans!_

* * *

Raven staggered backward with a scream of terror, upsetting a stack of boxes and tumbling them into a mess! They ripped open with age, avalanching her with random artifacts and objects. She thrashed back into the standing position, thoroughly shaken and trying not to whimper aloud at the pain she'd received in the fall. That had been the _last_ thing she'd been expecting. But, it was true. Raven saw _herself_ hanging from the rope, an elderly chair overturned directly beneath her. A mournful look was on her face, her arms dangling like limp noodles. She swayed gently back… and forth…… back…… and forth… 

Raven moaned in fatigue, unable to look at it for very long. "It's not real." She whispered, holding her head. "It's a _hallucination_… not there… _not there_…" she looked up, and the figure still hung there before her. Trembling horribly in her torn outfit, Raven came closer once again. It looked _exactly_ like her.

The rotted skin had pieces missing here and there, the eyes rolled into the skull to display black, lifeless sockets. Her mouth was slightly agape, signs of dripped spittle down her chin. Her cloak was missing, and her leotard was moth-eaten. How in the world had she stayed hanging there for so long? Her body was so old and decayed… Raven reached with a trembling hand, intent on shutting the eyelids so it wouldn't stare blankly at her. Standing up in the chair she made to do so.

_"You're a real **card**, woe-laden child."_

Raven's heart quivered and threatened to burst from her chest in fear. Icy cold adrenaline pumped through her system. It was talking to her. It was a zombified, decayed version of herself, and it was talking to her. Her body trembling at the terror she was witnessing, she drew dangerously close to the spectral doppleganger. "Yeah… a **_wild_** card." She passed her hand over its face to shut the eyelids and put it to rest, "_Morcana_…" she whispered.

The decayed body's back arched, drying all the way out very suddenly. Its lips curled back and split open, revealing rapidly eroding teeth. The fingers looked as though someone were sucking the remaining flesh off of them through a straw… Her ribcage was collapsing into itself with a spectral cry. It collapsed into dust and ash, leaving a pile on the floor.

Raven stood there on the chair, but quickly stepped down. She stood there, shaken beyond measure not for the first time. The fresh rush of adrenaline left her shaking and cold on the inside. She fell to her hands and knees, barely able to believe what she'd witnessed. Tears welled up inside her, but she fiercely fought them away. She would _not_ cry… _She would **not** cry_… A tiny drop plipped to the dusty floorboards, and she forced herself to her feet. "I'm still standing, you bastard." She whispered to the darkness. "That's six down, and six to go." It didn't sound so stupid when she said it that time. She was halfway there, and still alive. _For now_.

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Beast Boy was walking down the hall to his room, ready for his hour-long break. Robin was busy contacting Titans East for any info they might have on Raven's whereabouts. Cyborg, who had the next hour off as well, was in his room with the dumb rock-thing he'd gotten earlier. Starfire was standing on the roof, looking out across the city.

Beast Boy passed Raven's room on the way… and noticed the door was open. Looking one way down the hall, then the other… he slowly approached it. Peering inside, he found it dark and barely visible. There were no overhead lights, but the sun gave some light. It was a little past noon now on the second day of their search, and still no Raven. Taking a deep breath, he stepped beyond the threshold. He knew the half-demon goth girl wasn't home, but… a quick look in her room wouldn't hurt anything. Shoving his hands deep in his pockets to avoid touching anything, he took a few steps in. Carefully drawn symbols were on the walls, all put there by Raven. Her cowl-shaped bed looked a little like a cave from where he stood... He approached it, almost in a daze. Raven had missed a night in her bed already. Sitting on her bed, he took on of her soft pillows into his arms, squeezing it tight. He inhaled her scent gently, his animal instincts prickling. Squeezing his eyes shut and wondering for the hundredth time where Raven had gone, he heaved a sigh. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up –!

_"Raaaaanaaaaakaaaaaa–!" something whispered right in his ear._

Beast Boy jumped, staggering into Raven's bookshelf and almost knocking it over. "Who's there!" He demanded in a squeaky voice, ready to wet himself. It was the same voice they'd heard down in the cave below the tower. The whispers from inside the walls and vents! "Show yourself!" he commanded, trying to sound brave. An ethereal, mist-like form hissed out from under the bed. Beast Boy's eyes were as big as basketballs. It twisted… groaned… hissing seductively… The green teen was shaking uncontrollably, not so sure he wanted it to show itself anymore. _It was taking shape, hazy in the mist…_ Beast Boy's mind finally found his lungs, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" He was halfway down the hall by the time he'd run out of breath, having slammed the door to the room while retreating.

"Alright," Robin said. "If you guys hear anything from her, let us know okay?" He gave Aqualad a wary thumbs up, shutting off the viewing screen. "Where would she go so quickly… and not take any of her things…?" junior detective wanted to know. He stroked his chin out of habit, deep in thought – _when suddenly Beast Boy exploded into the common room and crashed into him._ "Beast Boy! What're you…?" Beast Boy was paler than he'd ever seen, fighting to regain himself and keep running. "What's wrong!" Robin grabbed him by both shoulders, shaking him slightly.

"I-I-I-I-I Suh-suh-suh-suh-suh-saw –!" Beast Boy yelped, for Robin had slapped him over the face. "I saw it! I saw a shadow in Raven's room!" he screamed, making Robin's hair fly back.

"TITAN'S! TO **_RAVEN'S ROOM_**!" Robin roared into his T-communicator. Starfire broke out of her trance on watching the city. She flew off the roof and broke a window of the common room to race inside! Cyborg's mechanical zoom-in eye flashed back to normal as he roughly stood from his examining table. The entire desk shook, leaving it in a disarray. There were sounds of feet coming from all wings of the tower, all gathering outside Raven's room.

When everyone was present and Cyborg's sonic cannon was deployed, Robin kicked the door in. "_Freeze_!" Robin shouted. The other Titans boiled into the room Starbolts, sonic cannon, and a green raptor were at the ready. Greeting them in the darkness of the half-demon's room was…

…_Nothing_.

The four of them stood there, breathing hard and searching the room for the enemy. But, there wasn't one to be found. The black, misty shape had vanished into thin air, leaving the room looking as it normally did. Beast Boy returned to his human form, but Robin had already rounded on him. "This is NOT the time to be playing pranks, Beast Boy." He snapped, grabbing him roughly by the collar. Glaring at him with venom, he shoved the green teen back into the hall.

"But I swear it!" Beast Boy said helplessly, looking as though he were about it cry. "I saw this dark misty stuff come out from under the bed and there was all this whispering! _I saw it_!" Robin clearly didn't believe him, and he looked desperately at Cyborg. "_You believe me right Cy_!" Beast Boy pleaded, falling to his hands and knees. Cyborg said nothing, looking unsure. He went back into the room, checking under the bed. Nothing was there, of course.

Robin swept away, Cyborg following. Starfire stayed behind, looking at him. She looked deeply concerned, hovering over near him. She peered into Raven's room one more time… but saw nothing. "I…" Starfire searched for words for a few moments before she knew what to say. "I think you saw something, friend Beast Boy." The green teen looked at her hopefully. "You would not lie when it comes to Raven, I believe. You have been searching harder than any of us, I have noticed." The redhead cupped his cheek, still hovering in the air. Tears sprang to Beast Boy's eyes yet again, his teenage hormones taking over completely. Starfire understood… "Perhaps you should take a rest… and you would not _see_ such bad things?"

Beast Boy's heart broke.

He stood violently, looking at her with hurt eyes that bordered anger and dispair. "_Screw you_!" He shouted in anguish, running away from her with tears streaking his face. Starfire, having never heard that phrase in her time on Earth, didn't know what to think. Not understanding the words but understanding the emotions behind them, she finally floated back to the ground.

"Beast Boy…" she murmured. She knew he would be even more upset if she gave chase, and decided to join her other two friends in the common room and let him be.

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Raven was in the common room yet again, some reading material in her hands. Reading always calmed her nerves, and as she sat down she wondered what Beast Boy would have to say this time around. Making herself as comfortable as possible on the dusty, ratty love seat, she pulled Beast Boy's diary from the purse she'd been carrying. Her brow furrowed from the first sentence, for it was in all capitals:

_Dear Diary,_

_I HATE THEM ALL! I F---ING HATE THEM ALL! I SAW IT THERE IN HER ROOM! I KNOW THAT'S WHAT TOOK RAVEN! THAT WHISPERING SHADOW THING! NO ONE BELIEVES ME, AND STARFIRE THINKS I'M HALLUCINATING!_

Raven frowned, looking at the page that was dotted with tears as the letter had been. He was angry and crying at the same time… Shifting to sit with her legs straight out across the love-seat, Raven continued to see what had happened.

_Cyborg and I went down into the timed vents when they opened, and found a cave. He wanted a sample of this big stone thingy with symbols all over it, but I said it was a bad idea. Did he listen? NO! He had to take a sample with his fancy corkscrew drill thingy and the whole thing broke apart, and even burst into flames! We rushed out just as the vent closed, and he almost crushed me diving through. I think we woke something up, diary… That whispering shadow… Later on in the day, I was in Raven's room… uhm… smelling her pillow. It sounds corny but she smells nice, y'know?_

Raven blushed, glad no one was around to see her do so. She'd done that earlier... _but that wasn't the point!_

_I was sitting there and I heard the same whispering we did down in the cave. I told it to come out… and it did. I ran for help, bringing everybody back with me. Robin kicked the door in, and it was gone! He held me by my collar, telling me not to pull pranks! That stubborn spikey-haired **f-face**! I wouldn't lie about stuff like that! Cyborg couldn't decide if I was lying, and Starfire told me to go **rest**! Like I was **hallucinating**! I don't need **rest**! I need help to find that shadow thing so I… I mean we, can get Raven back! Oh… I'm tired already though. I haven't slept much in the past two days…_

"You and me both, Beast Boy." Raven whispered, not knowing how long it had been since she'd had sleep. It felt like an eternity, and she was getting thirsty again. Swallowing her own spittle to keep her throat moist, she snapped the book shut again. The history of what had happened was slowly being revealed to her, and she wanted to save more for later… while resting between symbol findings. **IF** she found them all, that is…

She moaned softly, rubbing her eyes and sagging to one side. Her hand accidentally slipped between the cushions of the love-seat… _and she felt paper there_! Raven jumped to her feet, stuffing Beast Boy's diary back into her carrying-purse. Throwing the cushions off the love-seat she found it! Pulling it quickly to her face, Raven frowned. It was a torn sheet for playing an instrument. She sighed, ready to throw it back into the… _wait_… none of the Titans played an _instrument_. Beast Boy had tried guitar months ago, but had soon given up in frustration. There were lyrics under the line of musical notes. Raven read them aloud. "When your skies aren't so blue, your memories too, don't look away, look… _what_?" That was where the tear started, since it was only one line of music. Raven hastily put the cushions back on the love-seat, sitting down again. She scanned the piece of paper for any hidden marks or details, but found none. "No wonder it sounded bad." She noticed something of slight amusement. "Beast Boy was playing a guitar… this is _piano music_." Raven muttered to herself about Beast Boy's flair for riddles on keeping things hidden, looking at the piece of paper carefully. She read the lyrics over and over, trying to remember the song. Was it a song she knew…? _Oh my God_! She _did_ know the song! Beast Boy had been trying to sing it and play guitar at the same time for hours on end, and she'd memorized the lyrics because she'd heard them so many times. Raven stood, looking triumphant. "When your skies aren't so blue, your memories too, don't look away…" Raven tilted her head back. "_Look up_."

_Blazed into the ceiling as big as the T-car, high above her head, was the seventh symbol_.

And, conveniently written on the blade of the ceiling fan was the word. The symbol looked like two asterisks (A/N: they look like this ) connected with a line. And, jutting from the line that came away from the middle at a perfect right angle, was a line with a small circle on the end.

**MALUS **(_Mahl-uhs_)

Raven spoke the word softly, "_Malus.._." The entire living room was bathed in all the colors of the rainbow, blinding her momentarily. She forced her lids open, though, and watched it fade back to the normal. Raven looked closely at it… it looked as though it had been _burned_ into the ceiling. _Well, Beast Boy probably had a hard time getting crayons way up there_. The teenage girl got a small smile from that thought. She didn't want to know how he'd gotten that symbol up there, but she mentally praised him again for his odd cleverness. Raven had searched the whole common room, and had never _once_ thought to check the ceiling. Whenever he was desperate, Beast Boy was smarter than she gave him credit for!

* * *

There's the one in the common room everyone's been suggesting! Neat place to put it, eh? I hope you guys stick around for more, and leave a review if you have time! Join me again in part nine, because its coming soon! Thankies! 


	9. Larsus

_Here I am again! Thanks for stopping by! I love all my fans who keep coming back for more storytime… even if its scary stuff! Anyway, I don't own Teen Titans, the story's gone on for two full days and Raven's had no sleep… will she be able to stay awake long enough to finish her quest? This time around, Raven faces the challenges of fatigue, trying to stay awake to fight the darkness. But, she has seven of the symbols at her command, one of which she can still use for the smaller attacks the darkness is waging on her… (**WARNING**: Upcoming fan-service for Raven-lovers! Unnecessary, but still kinda fun! Flame me if you want on that subject, and I'll use the flames to cook marshmallows! Yummy!)_

* * *

Raven's Game

Part 9: **Larsus**

Raven yawned, rubbing her eyes and then slapping herself. She couldn't fall asleep…. _She couldn't fall asleep_! Shaking herself thoroughly, she decided to go on and start searching for the next symbol. As far as she knew, no room had been used twice. So, she'd have to search a new room or area. Where to go, though…? Raven looked around the common room for inspiration, but she'd already turned it upside down. Licking her dry lips and then wiping them dry again with her right hand, she swallowed. Her thirst was growing wearisome and there was nothing nourishing around the old, torn building. "As soon as I get out of here I'm getting a huge, tall glass of water…" she promised herself the reward of a lifetime. Her stomach groaned at her, and she quickly went on. "And then I'm gonna raid the fridge." She realized very suddenly how unlike herself she sounded. She stopped, running those two sentences through her head over and over… Had this whole experience changed her somehow? She looked herself over for anything unusual besides the symbols. Wait… where had Malus appeared on her body?

Raven looked up and down her bare legs, and felt around her breasts and torso. No sign of it… frowning and wondering where… she went over to the elevator doors, rubbing the dust off of them with the end of her cloak. They were like mirrors if you stood right in front of them. Looking around as though someone might be watching her, she removed her cloak, purse, and utility belt. Setting them aside she peered down her shirt, looking for the answer. When she received none, she unzipped her leotard from the back. Gingerly peeling the torn garment away, she revealed a dainty white bra and slender panties. Starfire's locket hung daintily between her breasts, glittering in the light that the flashlight provided from the floor where it lay. Her pale gray skin was soft and smooth, though. She quite honestly blushed at her reflection. She was in the common room in her _panties_! Shaking the perverted thought from her mind, she swallowed again to keep her throat from getting raw. She inspected herself in the shine of the doors, looking herself over as though it were a full-length mirror. Seeing the symbols on her hands, feet, and turning around to see the ones on her back… _there_! Up between her slender shoulder blades, was the symbol for Malus. "Mmm…" Raven said, reaching with some difficulty to stroke it. It hadn't pierced her cloak with its light like the others… _why_? Muttering to herself but glad for the little tidbit, she redressed and tightened her clothes.

Raven pulled her main outfit back on, casting her reflection one last glance. She reached for her cloak. It was torn down the middle in the back, so she knotted each half and put little tears along the inside of the main tear. They looked even more like wings now, she mused. She strapped the utility belt on tight, making sure it wouldn't shift on her. Adjusting Starfire's locket and picking up the purse of useful items, she stood dynamically. "Ready again." She whispered. She ran different rooms through her mind that she hadn't searched yet, and came up with the one she wanted. She was heading to –

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"I'll show _them_." Beast Boy muttered angrily, standing at the desk in his room. He had a small flashlight, some duct tape, and a hard hat. "I'll show them all…" he grunted as he bit the tape to cut off how much he wanted. Taping the flashlight to the hard hat, he flicked it on and off to be double sure that it worked. Tossing the duct tape over his shoulder and out of sight, he slammed his new invention on his head. "Whatever that thing is, it has Raven. _I know it_!" He pulled at his gloves, making sure they were on good and tight. Taking a deep breath, he stepped out into the hallway.

"Friend, you have emerged!" Starfire, who just happened to be passing by, greeted him. Like any teenager in his situation, Beast Boy held a slight grudge and said nothing. "You are still upset with me, yes?" she asked. Still he said nothing, and started towards the elevator. She followed him, determined to make up so he would smile again. "Why have you attached a small light-making device to that protective headgear, Beast Boy?" she asked, trying get him to say anything at all. "You are going somewhere dark that might hurt your head?" Normally, Beast Boy would've laughed at a statement like that. But right at the moment, the green teen was in no mood for jokes. He stood in the elevator and she joined him, eager to know where he was going. He punched the button marked '** B1**' and it lit up. "You are returning to the unpleasant room? _Why_?"

There was a long silence, and suddenly the doors opened. Beast Boy stepped out and turned around. The gesture meant that she was not to follow. She stood there in the elevator, tilting her head in confusion. As the doors were closing, Beast Boy spoke. "I'm going to find Raven. And the shadow-thing." He said. The doors hissed shut, leaving Starfire alone and confused as the elevator went back up the shaft.

Beast Boy turned around, clicking his flashlight helmet on. Going down the hall, he started towards the door of the basement. Heaving a sigh and praying for greater courage, he opened the door. It was dark and scary down there… but he couldn't let that stop him. The whispering shadow was down there, but so was _she_. He gulped once, puffing his chest out and starting down the stairs. The rather large basement made some things echo, including his footsteps on the steel stairs. When he reached the concrete floor at the bottom, he looked around. Everything was right where they'd left it. Oops… he'd forgotten to turn the light on. He quickly went over to the big switch and pushed it down. …_Nothing_. Slightly disturbed but writing it off as coincidence, he decided to make an echo in the large room to ease himself. "_**RAAAAAY**-**VEN**_!" He shouted, cupping his hands over his mouth. He fell silent, a cold chill going down his spine. Beast Boy's voice had been swallowed into shadow.

_There had been no echo._

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Raven walked down, down, down the stairwell, to the bottom floor. The basement was at the other end of the hall, behind just one door… Taking a few deep breaths, Raven stepped out into the hallway. A light was coming out of a certain place, and that was Raven's destination. "The elevator car…" she whispered, starting forward. She shut the door behind her… finding a huge binding symbol drawn on it. "Beast Boy…" Raven whispered, touching it. She got out the flashlight, holding it steady and sweeping the hall with it. She gasped softly, her eyes widening.

_The walls were covered with binding symbols, the entire hallway._

Deeply disturbed but actually feeling a little safer, Raven made her way down the hall. Her ears pricked for any whispers, but she only heard the sound of her own nervous breathing. Licking her lips, she cautiously peered into the brightly lit elevator car. One of Cyborg's '**_250,000 candle-power_**' lanterns was sitting in the elevator, pointed straight up. It lit the entire thing quite nicely, and Raven stepped in. She felt safer in the light? That was a change on her part, since she'd grown so used to the dark in her lifetime… forcing the past from her mind and focusing on the present, she steadied herself.

Unable to help it, Raven leaned out and looked at the door to the basement. The biggest binding symbol she'd ever seen was on the door itself, and dozens of smaller ones were all around it. All of them in crayon. All of them **black**. Pursing her lips and forcing down a shudder, she went back to what she was doing. Carefully searching the elevator and knowing she had to be right, Raven looked for the eighth symbol. She checked the paneling of the elevator car, wondering if Beast Boy had hidden a symbol in one of them. Getting the screwdriver out, Raven prepared to open one. Accidentally bumping into the wall as she squatted to do so, she was hit on the head with a coin.

Raven gave a start, standing straight up and ready to shout Malus… she saw nothing. She knelt down to see what had hit her. An elevator button? Her brow furrowed and she turned to look at the set of buttons. The one that had hit her lay in the palm of her hand, leaving one of the holes empty. The hole usually labeled **B1**. She came closer, getting a better look. The elevator was lit, but she used her flashlight anyway. She peered closer into it with one eye.

Raven was suddenly blinded, and she went reeling with a cry! Rubbing the spots out of her eyes and sprawled on the floor, she recoiled and held the flashlight like a club with both hands. Looking around for any sign of trouble, she peered into the hole again. Again the light flared, but she was ready and held her hand out in front of it. Angling her hand, she saw what it was from the projected image it made.

_The eighth symbol!_

It looked like an equals sign with a line drawn down the middle. At the end of each line was a small circle, and the whole thing was tilted diagonally. "Simple symbols… but _powerful_…" she murmured. "Let me pick this one, eh?" Raven turned to where the symbol shone on her upper arm like a tattoo made of light. "_C'mon_." she said tersely, as though ordering it onto her skin. Raven felt a sharp burning sensation and she yelped. Clutching her arm, she waited a few moments before she could look. Blazed there like an old scar, was the symbol. Raven sighed softly, stating her obvious wish. "I hope these come off when this is all over…" She accidentally bumped into the lantern, making it tumble out of the elevator into the hall. She sighed, wondering if it would be wise to take it with her… oh wait, it had a small power generator with it, connected by an orange electric cable. Sighing, she stood to pull it back into the elevator.

_The elevator doors slammed shut as though springloaded!_

Raven cried out as the elevator jerked into motion, moving upward. The cord of the lantern snapped, leaving her with a stub of a cord and a flashlight. She waited for a moment, frozen in fear. She waited… and waited… there weren't this many floors in the tower! She glanced down and saw that the floor had become glass. She gasped, a bead of sweat working its way down her face. She was so high… high above the tower in some kind of freakish elevator ride! A **_Hellevator_** was more like it. She looked desperately at the buttons, and found them all to have question marks on them! "_What the hell…_?" Completely forgetting about Malus, she desperately searched for the lyric. Whipping out the screwdriver, she saw she had four maintenance panels to choose from. Each with four screws. The elevator came to a halt, way up in the sky. She dove at the panel, desperately unscrewing the first screw. It came away and she started on the second… it came out too. Her hands were shaking in terror, wondering just how long the elevator would be way up there.

Suddenly the whole thing dropped. Raven screamed, getting a gut-wrenching stomach rushand hitting the ceiling. She grunted on impact, and thrashed to fight her way back to the panel. She had to get to the word before it was destroyed when she hit the ground. She found and clawed her way back down quickly, seeing the ground coming up at her. Titan's Tower was coming back into view… instead of unscrewing she began prying at the panel with the screwdriver. The flashlight was tumbling aimlessly in freefall, flashing her with its beam of light now and then. She moaned in fatigue, the stomach rush making her feel ill. The panel suddenly popped open and flipped over right in her face! Raven grabbed it and flipped it over as the ground started rushing up to meet her. "**_LARSUS_**!" she cried in agony.

Raven was thrown from the elevator into the common room. The double doors stayed open and she heard the screaming metal all the way down until – **_CRASH_**. She flinched, and saw the cloud of dust and smoke come up to meet her. Sprawled out as oddly as she was, she coughed heavily as it engulfed her for a moment. She staggered to her feet, groaning and falling onto the love seat again. "I hate this." She whispered, ready to throw up anything that was left in her hungry stomach. She suddenly remembered that she still had Malus, and mentally kicked herself. Pounding her fists and swearing at the top of her lungs, new tears came to her eyes. "_I **hate** this…_" she whispered again, her voice sounding hurt.

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Beast Boy was a gorilla, in the larger ventilation shaft. He didn't have time to wait for it to open again. Raising a ham-sized fist, be bashed the metal until it gave. Bending it back until it was almost folded in half, he turned human again. The helmet and flashlight reappeared as well, and he was on his way. Looking carefully around and listening for his enemy, he descended into darkness.

* * *

_Well, that's all for now. I hope you guys are still enjoying the story! Now that school has started up again, the number of reviewers seems to have greatly diminished… (weep) So, even if you just put you liked it or hated it, I would greatly appreciate the review! Thankies, and I'll be back soon! **Promise**!_


	10. Olkas

_Huzzah! It's part ten of Raven's game! I'm glad we've all ocme this far, and thank you for all the reviews. They make me write and update stuff faster! Well, Raven has eight of the twelve alchemy symbols now. She has Malus at her side, but right now that her **only** defense. Meanwhile, Beast Boy has gone down into the cave all by himself! Will he come out alive, or is the game and the real world starting to converge too closely? How long before all sorts of horrible things start happening at the **real** tower? Read on and find out! I don't own Teen Titans!_

* * *

Raven's Game

Part 10: **Olkas**

Beast Boy could hear nothing but the drip, drip, drip of water in the cave. There must've been a body of water nearby… an underground stream, maybe? Carefully picking his way amongst the rocks and shadows, the changling came upon his goal. Licking his dry lips, he swept the gaze of his helmet's flashlight across the wreckage. The giant slab of rock that Cyborg had ruined lay in innumeral pieces. He reached down and picked a piece up. It looked like sand stone, but that would've dissolved with time an age ago. Not a real expert on rocks, Beast Boy tossed it over his shoulder. It broke into tiny pieces on impact, and he went on. "What the…?" He came upon, perhaps, what he'd been searching for.

A passageway was carved into the cave. A _perfect_ square passage of perhaps ten feet in every direction, it gave Beast Boy the willies. How far did it go? Chewing his lower lip and trying to remember his mission, he took the first step inside. Unmistakable columns were set in pairs, holding an unthinkable amount of rock up. Trying not imagine the whole thing cave in on him, Beast Boy gazed at the walls. Symbols. Thousands of scriptures and drawings and hieroglyphs. He stopped to have a look, swallowing. Amongst them, repeatedly, was an oddly simple symbol. It reminded Beast Boy of a gun-sight, but with no plus-sign in the middle of the circle. Tilting his head, he looked at another oddity. Some sort of creature? It was a strange animal-shape that not even he recognized. It looked vaguely drawn, as though the stone carver wasn't sure of the creature's appearance. All around it, randomly, was the same simple symbol he'd seen only seconds ago.

Scratching the back of his head and knowing exactly what the wall was pertaining too, he swallowed loudly. "Raven…? Are you here?" he whispered. Nothing. It was dead silent aside from his breathing. And, to one with animal instincts, complete silence was always something to be on edge about. "_Raven_…?" he whispered again. The rather shallow beam of light pierces as deeply into the darkness as it could, but it still wasn't much. "I shoulda brought a bigger light…" Beast Boy murmured, looking back and forth quickly. Suddenly braving the darkness alone didn't seem like such a great idea. But, he had to keep going if he wanted to find Raven. If she was still alive… _of course she was_! Beast Boy huffed loudly, quickly walking forward to keep his thoughts from wandering.

More and more writing greeted him, more the gun-sight-similar symbol, and more depiction of what could only be the shadow he'd seen in Raven's room. _How freaking long **was** this hallway_? Not knowing if he truly wanted to reach the end… he did. And what greeted him was a sight that would haunt him forever.

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"Okay Star, let's try that one again." Robin pointed to the book. He was trying to teach Starfire better English, but wasn't having much luck. The hunt for Raven was in brief recess, and this seemed like the most productive thing to do.

"The rain in Spain is mostly in the plains?" It came out like a question as she read it. The redhead tilted her head. "Surely Earth's flying machines have doors and windows to keep rain out?" she asked, looking concerned.

Robin sighed, closing the book at last. "I think that's enough for today." He set the book aside, leaning back with a sigh. "You're progressing, but still…" he let his sentence hang, for she was looking at him with her big green eyes. "_What_?" He asked.

"I am concerned about friend Beast Boy." said Starfire, looking uncomfortably away. "He went into the basement again to search for Raven." Robin's expression hardened a little as she went on. "He is determined to find her and the shadowy creature of which he spoke. I am beginning to think perhaps… _he is not lying_."

"You're _still_ thinking about that?" Robin said, frustrated. "He made a nasty joke, and then tried to weasel his way out of it. You shouldn't believe him. Besides–"

Robin's voice suddenly faded into the background, as though someone had lowered the Boy Wonder's volume control. Starfire suddenlyturned such a discolored, pale version of orange she was almost white. Black mist was rising out of the floor, behind Robin's back and twenty feet away. The sight of it filled her with an instinctive terror, and he lips went slightly agape. What on _Tameran_…? A pair of white eyes stared at her, widened, then vanished.

"Robin… _ah_…" Starfire couldn't find her voice to tell him to turn and look. Thousands of screaming voices filled her head and she groaned. Her brow furrowed, and a bead of sweat worked its way down her temple.

"Starfire?" Robin said, watching her swoon one way then the other. "Hey, are you sick? _Starfire_?" He watched her eyes roll into her head and cried her name as she hit the floor. "_HEY_! Starfire! _What's wrong_!" He cradled her in his arms, shaking her shoulders.

"Please… make it stop…" she moaned. "Those eyes… those horrid eyes…" she looked as though she was having some kind of attack! Robin, thinking her delirious with fever, laid her quickly on the couch and went to fetch some ice. She was sweating profusely when he came back, and flinched when she felt the ice pack on her forehead.

"It's okay Star…" Robin whispered, holding her hand in both of his. "Breathe. Whatever it is, _breathe_." She was a Tameranian, and he had no idea what was going on. Was it some sort of alien sickness? Another _transformation_?

_Starfire could hear them. Lost souls weeping. Screaming. Writhing in eternal agony. Tears poured from her eyes at the haunting, terrible sound. Her mouth was agape as she tried to gasp for air. She couldn't see. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't–!_

Beast Boy burst into the room, shouting incoherently. Starfire broke out of her trance and sat bolt up, scaring Robin back a few feet. Cold sweat chilled her body, and she burst into new tears. Pulling her legs up to her chest with her arms, she hid her face and wept. Robin had never seen such a spectacle. "_I found something_!" Beast Boy shouted. "I… what's wrong with Starfire?"

"_I dunno..._" The Boy Wonder admitted. "_I think she had some kind of **attack**_!"

Still pale to the point of looking sick, Starfire looked up and stared at Beast Boy. The pure, unbridled fear poured from her eyes. Her lips trembled before she spoke. "I… am sorry I doubted you." she whispered, twin streaks of saltwater on her cheeks.

He regarded her for a long few seconds of silence. His helmet's flashlight was broken, and he was covered with earth. In his clutching hand was what looked like a piece of stretched paper. "You saw it, didn't you?" Beast Boy said, coming closer. "The shadow thing?"

"_FOR THE LAST TIME YOU FREAKING IDIOT_!" Robin jumped to his feet, stomping over to where the changling stood. Beast Boy knew Robin would never believe them until he saw it with his own eyes. Why? Who knew. But… _Starfire had seen it_. He could see in her eyes that she'd seen and heard more than she would've ever been able to handle. Robin's screaming lecture would mean little to him as soon as it was over, and then they would talk. They would talk about the **_vellum_** he'd just found.

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Raven sighed, done resting for the moment. Closing Beast Boy's diary and standing, she stuffed it into the purse. There was more than before written down. It was in greater detail, as though it were changing as the story went on. Was the diary… _linked to the real world_? Raven sighed, knowing this not to be true. It was a part of the game, twisted to tug at her emotionally. She didn't have to luxury of thinking about what was going on at home. She had to concentrate on the task at hand.

Armed only with the symbol of Malus for protection, Raven exited the common room. She checked the walls, ceiling, and floor of everywhere she went. Room by painstaking room, she searched for hours. No luck at all. Frustrated and thinking of stopping to rest again, she returned to the stairwell. Grunting as she went up the stairs one at a time, she came to a sudden halt. "Could it really be that easy…?" she murmured. She looked up the stairwell. Up the many floors of Titans tower to the only exit outside the front door and garage. "The _roof_." She whispered.

Beast Boy had hidden all the symbols where he thought Raven would find them… she spent a lot of time on the roof, didn't she? Would he hide something up there for her to find… or would she even be able to get outside onto the tower? She didn't know, but it seemed like the best answer.

Invigorated by her inspiration, Raven started up the stairs more quickly. A small smile actually touched her lips as she sprang up them two by two. Starfire's necklace tinkled merrily between her breasts, and Robin's utility belt was rubbing against her hip. All of Beast Boy's knowledge and a few other trinkets were at her disposal. For the first time since she'd arrived, Raven felt a small surge of confidence.

Arriving at the top stair, Raven came to the door. She looked around before she even touched it. No binding symbols in sight, but no whispering shadows either. Putting her hood back and taking a deep breath, Raven pushed the door. It swung open with great difficulty, squealing on its hinges. She winced, emerging out onto the roof. Just as she'd seen through the common room window, the heavy fog and swirling mist kept Jump City from view.

_"Azarath… Metrion… Zinthos…"_

Raven froze on the spot, her breath catching in her throat. **_She_** certainly hadn't said that!

"Azarath… Metrion… Zinthos…"

Raven's eyes grew wide in absolute disbelief. There was someone else on the roof, chanting her chant… with her own voice. Ready to shout the word _Malus_, she edged forward to see through the thick fog.

"Azarath… Metrion… Zinthos…"

How had she not heard it when she was in the attic? Or, had it just arrived? Was it another demonic shade of herself to face? Swallowing, she came a little further forward. "Who's there…?" she whispered loudly.

"Azarath… Metrion… Zinthos…"

There was a figure sitting on the roof, near the edge. Sure enough, it was wearing Raven's cloak. All hunched over and with a slight hump in its back, it vibrated gently as it repeated the chant in even intervals.

"Azarath… Metrion… Zinthos…"

"Who are you?" Raven said a little more boldly when it didn't move. It sure _sounded_ like her… "Are you here to guard one of the symbols…?" She got no response, of course, except –

"Azarath… Metrion… Zinthos…"

"I'm here to _take_ it from you." Raven said, slowly reaching for the utility belt she'd borrowed. Carefully and slowly in case the fake tried to attack, she pulled out the bow-stick. It sprang into existence, and she approached the chanting figure. She couldn't fight with the bow, but a good whack on the head would hurt just about anybody. Its hood was up and its body not visible, but it was still trembling as it chanted…

"Azarath… Metrion… Zinthos…"

Raven raised the bow-stick high, right behind the fake version of herself.

"Azarath… Metrion…"

She brought the bow-stick down and the figure completely collapsed. The sound of breaking glass and metal met her ears as it came apart completely. She staggered back in surprise as pieces flew everywhere. Breathing hard, she suddenly got a good look at the figure. It wasn't her _at all_.

_It was a dummy, taken from the evidence room._

On it was a crudely drawn smiley face. It had been sitting on one of Cyborg's generators, holding a CD player that was connected to a loudspeaker. The CD-player had come unhooked when Raven had pummeled the dummy, and she knelt. Pushing the jack back into the hole, she heard –

"Azarath… Metrion… Zinthos…"

It wasn't an evil copy of her… it was a _recording_ of her! Beast Boy had dressed a dummy up like her and had placed the loud-speaker and CD player there for it to make the chant. Right on the location where she usually came to meditate. She pulled the jack out again to silence it. How on earth had he gotten a recording of her voice…? Raven didn't know, and decided she didn't want to. Carefully, she stepped over the broken glass. It was red, stained glass. It was meant to look like her chakra gem. Raven touched her forehead automatically. The replica was way too big, but it got the message across. Heaving a sigh, she began to examine what she'd found.

Acting as though it were a crime scene, Raven carefully set everything out and organized it. The dummy. The cloak. The broken glass. The CD player. The generator. The loud speaker. Looking slowly over everything she had to choose from, she went for the dummy first. It was a gender-less, white-skinned thing. It was a wooden puppet that had grown dusty from sitting somewhere, all alone, for so long. Aside from the silly smiling face on the head, followed by the magic-marker purple hair, it didn't seem to be a big piece of evidence. She set the whole thing carefully aside.

She examined the cloak, but found nothing there either. It was old and moth-eaten, squashing Raven's idea of switching cloaks. Even the torn one she was wearing was better than _that_ one. Sighing, she went on to the CD player.

The generator had been keeping the CD player going for God knew how long. Since it didn't need much power, Cyborg's generator could probably keep it running for longer than the little thing was meant to last. Raven was happy she'd found it before it had simply decayed… like the rest of the tech in the tower. She opened it and pulled the CD out. It was a burnt CD of course, labeled '_Quoth the Raven: Our Lost Kin Has Ascended_' in magic marker. Raven frowned at the title. What sort of title was that? Was that part of the riddle? She stared at it, but could find no words mooshed together, oddly spelled or capitalized words. Beast Boy's hints were always different, much to her tired mind's annoyance.

Sighing, she checked the generator for anything unusual. It was Cyborg's all right. She couldn't tell much about, other than it was still working. There were no markings or notes or slips of paper stuffed in any of the cracks.

"_What am I looking at, Beast Boy_?" Raven stood with a grunt, kicking the generator with her foot. Feeling rather foolish when she did so, she tried to calm down. Then, she quite suddenly noticed something. The little generator had tumped over, revealing something hidden beneath it. A victorious swell in her chest, Raven knelt to see. There, clawed into the cement by none other than the changling himself, was a message.

_**Blind red eyes can't see the truth.**_

"What…?" Raven murmured, reading it over and over. Beast Boy had probably been a raptor or a tiger… something large with claws… to be able to do that in _cement_. "Blind red eyes can't see the truth?" she asked softly. Swallowing loudly and her brow furrowing, Raven looked through all her evidence again. The dummy, the generator, the CD player, the CD, the cloak, and the red gla… _she hadn't checked the red glass for anything important_. Growing suspicious right away, Raven picked up one of the broken shards and looked at it closely. Was there a message scratched into it? Would she have to reassemble it to see what it said? That would take _forever_! She squinted, looking closer. Something white greeted her eye as she stared through the red glass. Raven let her vision focus _through_ the glass, and she gasped.

It was enormous. Stretched across the entire roof, painted in a sort of ink that could only be seen in red light, was the ninth symbol! Raven backed slowly up until she was almost in the edge to see the whole thing. Beast Boy had really outdone himself this time. She actually smiled at the irony. Raven had told Beast Boy a thousand times that her chakra… _or her third **eye**_… was very aware of the world around her. He'd laid a puzzler that pointed to that, since less than a percent of the human race could use their third eye. They were **blind** in one eye, so to speak. "Blind eyes can't see the truth… _but third eyes can_…" she'd long-dropped that catch phrase, but he'd remembered it. The red glass was meant to represent her third eye, and let her see the truth. _Through red glass_. An **_eye_**. It revealed to her the ninth symbol and at the same time, its lyric:

**OLKAS** (_Ole-cuss_)

"Olkas…" Raven whispered. She stared at the almost blinding symbol for a while, looking through the shard of red glass. She moved it out of her vision, and she couldn't see the symbol anymore. She moved it back, and there it was again. What had Beast Boy used to accomplish that illusion? She shook her head, a crooked smile working its way up one side of her mouth. "Not bad, Beast Boy." She said aloud. A bright light suddenly flared on her arm, and she hissed in pain. She looked at her upper arm, the one that didn't have Larsus on it, and saw a brand new symbol. Olkas. "This is starting to feel familiar…" said Raven, her eyebrow twitching. "I don't get to just write stuff down, do I? Nope. I have to have it tattooed onto my body. "Apocalypse warnings, alchemy symbols… _whatever the hell_…" she trailed off into her own sarcasm, but suddenly fell silent. She stared at the dummy.

_It was moving._

It got up like a puppet on strings, grabbing the bow-stick from where Raven had left it on the ground. It rose to its full height, and Raven stared in disbelief. It twirled the stick with deadly ease, and posed for battle. The mannequin that Beast Boy has stolen from the evidence room had come to life. The wooden joints groaned slightly as it stood straight. The goofy, smiling face that Beast Boy had drawn frowned at her, then it's eyes glowed red.

Regarding it evenly, Raven watched it charge at her with a silent screech of battle. With no mouth to speak of it leapt at her to knock her clear off the roof. She realized she was standing on the edge, but just as quickly realized she wouldn't be able to dodge the attack. Raven straightened up, standing squarely to face her opponent. Her mouth was a thin line as time seemed to slow down for the moment. Her eyebrows gathered into a hardened expression and, "_Malus_." She whispered.

It came apart in midair, and Raven was battered with wooden pieces. They pitched themselves over the edge due to their momentum, and Raven grabbed the bow-stick before it went over the edge. She turned, watching it fall into the mists. The vague sound of impact greeted her, but she found no satisfying rush to accompany it. What the hell was that supposed to be? Was the shadow growing weaker? Running out ideas? Raven wildly wondered if perhaps it wasn't focusing on her at the moment. But then again, who else was there for it go after?

She exited the roof, muttering to herself as she stuck the glass shard in the purse. Using the bow as a walking stick, she descended the stairs to make her way back to the common room.

-------------------------------------------

"Yes, I am quite sorry I did not believe you earlier." Starfire looked ashamed. She, Beast Boy, and Cyborg were all sitting around the table. Robin was searching for signs of Raven via the Jump City map. The homing device in her brooch was sure to turn up a signal soon… He left the other three to their own devices. He'd shouted at Beast Boy for a while, but had been frustrated to hardly get a reaction from him. It was as though he didn't care.

"It's alright, Star." Beast Boy said, still looking at the vellum. The only reason he knew it was vellum was because he was such an animal rights sort of guy. He knew all the vocabulary. "You saw it, and you know better now. But, we gotta focus…. _Cyborg_?" he spoke his friend's name.

Cyborg had been sitting there, scanning the vellum to get a carbon date on it. His red-eye flashed a few times, signaling the scan was done. "Its about… six-thousand years old." He proclaimed. "That sample of rock I took was around forty-five hundred years old." The metal man looked unsure of himself as he went on. "That place is old, and it had visitors on a regular basis. That's what I'm guessing. One of them must've dropped this." The vellum had twelve symbols on it, arranged in a pair of columns. There was a thirteenth symbol at the top, though. The gun-sight symbol with no plus-sign in the middle. "And it glittered when you picked it up?"

"Yeah, dude." Beast Boy nodded. "Like it was supposed to be found or something."

"We gotta be careful with this thing… _its brittle_. Lucky you got it here in one piece." Cyborg mumbled, stroking his chin.

"It's got something to do with that shadow-thing, and Raven too." Beast Boy confirmed. "We need to check out Raven's books, and see if any of them are in there."

"Mmm…" Starfire said quietly. "I shall perform the main research in Raven's room. Perhaps the two of you could search for any Earthly origins to this odd calligraphy?"

"Agreed." Cyborg nodded. "We split up the research and cover more ground."

"We gotta find Raven. That's the main mission." He pointed at both of them in turn. "This thing has to be the key. I just know it. If that shadow-thing has Raven, then this might tell us how to stop it or something!"

The metal man and the redhead nodded, and the search was on.

* * *

_Yay for part ten! I hope you enjoyed it… Raven has nine symbols now, with only three to go! Will she run into anymore horrors? Perhaps one's not so corny as a living wooden dummy? The REASON I put something corny like that in there was this. If the shadow wasn't focused on getting her, and was roaming in the real world a little as well… its influence in causing terror wouldn't have been as strong. Raven didn't take long to beat this incarnation of fear because it wasn't at full power… . Well, if you feel like it, join me again in part eleven, Mortym! P.S. Sorry Robin's kind of the bad guy here, not believing anybody. But, I couldn't figure he would go on a ghost hunt. LOL!_


	11. Mortym

_Back to bring you more scary stuff is **ME**! Will-the-Titan! Yay! I now bring you the eleventh part of my latest and greatest story, Raven's Game! Sorry about the long pause between updates. I HATE making people wait to read the next part of my stories. So, here's the next part of the story. I don't own Teen Titans!_

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Raven's Game 

Part 11: **Mortym**

Starfire flipped feverishly through one of Raven's books. She sat cross-legged amongst a disaster area of research, a pencil behind her ear and notes scribbled in Tameranian. "Surely there is _something_ in this book…" she murmured, glancing around the room again. She'd been thoroughly shaken after the run-in with the shadow-creature, and wasn't about to let it sneak up on her _again_. Satisfied that there was nothing in the room with her, she looked back to the book. Murmuring in her home language, she tried to decipher the book's odd alphabet. Most of Raven's books were in Azar, the language of her homeland.

But, the book Starfire was looking at right now was handwritten. It was quite old and dog-eared, but written in perfect English. Since she could read that, Starfire had taken particular interest in it. Glancing over at the copy of the vellum Cyborg had made for each of them, she mumbled to herself as she compared one of the symbols with the one being explained on the page. No good. It was close, but not the same symbol. She'd found one by lucky chance and her spirits had lifted… but she hadn't found any others and it had been hours. Sighing in depression, the alien princess closed the book with a sigh. Needing to stretch her legs, she stood and placed the book on a stack she'd made.

She went down one hall and up another, to Beast Boy's room. The door was wide open, and she let out a little shriek when she saw what he was doing. "Friend! Why are you scrawling a symbol so large on your wall?" she cried.

Beast Boy gave a start, staring at her. A binding symbol was on the wall, made with black crayon. "I found it in one of the books I took while you were researching." He said. "Its some kinda warding symbol. Its supposed to keep evil spirits away…" he trailed off, but quickly spoke again. "Did you find anything?"

"I have located one of the twelve oddities we have decided to decipher." Starfire nodded, showing him her notes. "It is called '_Mortym_.'" She emphasized the word. "It was used to help place things in a state of absolute dormancy. I think that perhaps you were right in your accusation, friend Beast Boy. It is a spell to reseal the beast, whatever it may be."

Beast Boy nodded warily, then spotted Cyborg in the doorway. "What's up, ya'll?" he said, not looking very cheerful. "I found one of the symbols on the net, but it took for freakin' ever to track it down." He made wide hand gestures to make sure they understood. "These symbols are really old, man. I'm not sure they're all from Earth."

"I found one of them in one of Raven's books. Perhaps they are of Azar origin?" Starfire tilted her head, wondering.

"Well, whatever they are, there's still more to do. We gotta keep going." Beast Boy said firmly. The other two nodded, and it was back to work.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Raven was working very delicately. She'd gathered up all the red shards of the glass she'd broken on accident, and taken them to the common room. Having calmed down to use her powers for only a few moments, she mashed the glass together and melted it into one solid piece. Licking her dry lips, she shaped it with her mind to look like a red eye-patch. Working quickly with some thread from Starfire's sewing kit, she put a braided string through it. She let the whole thing cool and harden. "Perfect." Raven praised her invention, picking it up. It was a red-vision glass. Tying it around her head, she slid the red glass over one eye like an odd eye-patch. Disoriented with the color for only a few moments, she stopped to adjust to it. Looking like a pirate with a glass eye-patch, she looked around the room. Feeling proud of herself, Raven made double-sure that it was secure enough that it wouldn't fall off when she moved her head or something. Sure enough, it stayed tied.

The dark Titan looked down at herself very suddenly. She had something from every Titan now. With a wry smile, she took stock of what she'd gathered from the others. She had Robin's utility belt, Starfire's locket, Beast Boy's diary and, in a _sense_… Cyborg's eye. Raven suddenly wondered if perhaps the last symbol's solution meant for her to gain 'red-vision.' Would her new sight tell her anything as to the location of the next symbol? Very suddenly her question was answered. On the cabinets in the kitchen area, written in huge lettering, was –

_If you can read this, good for you. Train hard and be the best super hero there is!_

Following the sentence was a sloppily drawn heart-shape. Raven smirked at Beast Boy's "prank". She'd been right. The next symbol would clearly need the aid of 'red-vision.' She snorted at the stupid name for it, but it wasn't like there was anything better. "Leading me along, piece by piece…" Raven murmured, fingering her new tool. "Good job, Beast Boy. I–" she cut herself short. She was standing on a huge, red arrow. Shutting her 'red vision' eye, Raven couldn't see it anymore. Opening it again and closing the regular eye, she saw the arrow again as plain as day. It was pointing towards the stairwell. Raven made her way over and pushed the door open. She saw a line of the special ink/paint Beast Boy had made trailing downward. She followed it, keeping her guard up just in case.

She followed the red line and stepped out of the stairwell on a new floor. The sentences that had been invisible on the common room cabinets suddenly made sense. The line stopped at the doorway to the training room. Heaving a sigh and opening her uncovered eye as well, Raven pushed the door open. It was dark inside, that was for sure. Taking out the flashlight she flicked it on and looked around.

Raven saw Cyborg's weight set had long broken the bench-pressing bar in two. The table was bent severely and the weights had been scattered everywhere. Robin's punching dummy was slumped to one side, rotting with age. There wasn't enough of it left for it to come to life, Raven sarcastically knew. Her eyes traveled over to Starfire's droid machine. The little things were meant for target practice, flying around and shooting at her with stun lasers. They were old and absolutely _caked_ with dust. Beast Boy's running treadmill was in equally bad shape, too. The conveyer belt was ripped, the speed indicator cracked, and the dials hanging loose.

Raven traveled to where she herself usually trained. Her cylinders, heavy and meant to be moved with her powers, were completely missing. Where had they gone? Had Beast Boy moved them to make room for something. She searched the room for whatever might leave a hint for her. But no, they were gone altogether.

Raven scanned the rather bare walls with her red vision, but found no hidden words. Had Beast Boy simply led her here to train? What for? Her opponent wasn't exactly a _physical_ fighter. It was an evil shadow… spirit…_thing_? Sighing, she went to examine Cyborg's weight set more carefully. Maybe there was something more deeply hidden. There were maybe twenty different weights available for the bench-pressing table, ten for each side. She looked at each one in turn, checking them with her normal and red vision. They seemed normal enough – _wait_! One of them had a spattering of Beast Boy's special ink on it. Was that meant to draw her eyes? Was there something on the other side? "Oh goody…" Raven muttered. The weight she wanted to flip over was labeled '60 lbs.' How the hell was she supposed to flip _that_ over? Annoyed but not wanting to overlook something potentially important, Raven squatted down and heaved at it.

Groaning in effort, she tensed all the muscles in her body. "Guuuuuuuuu-_AH_!" he fingers slipped off of the heavy weight and she flew backward. Landing on her butt with a grunt she swore under her breathe. Getting up and wiping her sweaty palms on her cloak, she tried again. Her face turned as red as a cherry and she puffed air out at odd intervals. Letting go at last, she leaned on her knees with her hands, huffing and puffing. "I'm not made for this…" she murmured. "_Cyborg's_ the weight-lifter, not _me_." Staring at the taunting clue, she grumbled to no one that was there. Sweat had gathered on her forehead, and she finally stood and wiped it away. Thinking hard, she grabbed the two halves of the bar that was meant to hold the weights. Sticking one in the middle where the bar usually was, she pushed on it hard. Grunting and moaning and pushing as hard as she could, she finally tumped it over! Using the other half of the bar as a brake, she stopped it from rolling away. "Got it…" she inspected her prize. "Eh…?" she frowned.

_**M-6** was painted in Beast Boy's invisble 'red vision' ink._

"Another button in the T-car?" Raven whispered. "No… he wouldn't put two symbols in the same spot, would he?" Beast Boy had been rather clever about hiding the symbol in separate places so far, so he wouldn't stop _then_. "M-6, though? What is that?" Raven licked her dry lips with concern. There were other weights… Reaching for one of the small ten-pound ones, she turned it over. _O-2_ greeted her. "Eh…?" she flipped over some of the smaller weights. T-4. M-1. R-3. Y-5. She couldn't find anymore. "What the hell is _this_, Beast Boy?" she grumbled at the newest puzzle she'd come across.

It had been effectively hidden on Cyborg's bench-pressing weights. Altogether, the weight was about 300 pounds, but that didn't seem to help at all. Raven sighed, looking at each one in turn… _Coordinances_? A _code_ of some kind? Raven suppressed an exhausted yawn. She hadn't slept in Azar knew how long, and it was seriously taking its toll on her. She would have to figure this out and solve the rest… or she could fall asleep accidentally and be consumed by she shadows… The letters and numbers seemed to swim around before her, and she rather harshly slapped herself. Feeling the sting revived her greatly, and she glared intently at her problem.

Then, not only that, but she found the rather simple solution. "It's in _numerical_ order." She pointed to the weight with the number one painted on it. Accompanying it was the letter 'M.' Raven noted this, and spied that number two had an 'O' with it. Repeating the pattern, she spoke the newest word! "_Mortym_!"

**MORTYM** (_more-tim_)

Cyborg's bench-press suddenly fell apart, scaring her silly. It had finally rotted too much, and had collapsed. Turning itself over in its fall, she saw the symbol itself. It looked almost exactly like the Egyptian sign for rebirth, akha. Raven wondered for a moment if each symbol had a country or religon of origin. Christian, Egyptian. Greek. Roman. Mesopotamian… Had alchemists from all over the Earth contributed to this spell…? But then again, some of the symbols reminded Raven of the ancient Azar scrolls she'd seen… _was there a connection_?

"_Eeeeesssssseeeeeeaaaaaaanaaaaa_…." Raven went pale and whirled around. Her flashligth lanced towards the doorway. The whispers were back. That _thing_ was coming. It's nonsense whispers continued as it drew closer. The doorway grew dark with its impending presence. Raven stood at guard, trembling visibly. She wasn't ready. _She wasn't ready for it yet_! "_Raaaaaaanaaaaakaaaaa_…." It was so close. God, it was _almost there_. Raven's pupils were tiny with fear, and the beam of the flashlight magnified her shaking with its unsteady light. "Eeeeeeenoooooosssss…" A whispering mist flowed carefully into the room. Raven recoiled, getting away from the door as it poured in.

_Raven's flashlight went out._

She looked down at it in disbelief. "**NO**!" she cried. "No! _Not now_!" she smacked it with her hand a few times, making the light flicker on and off. The mist was drawing closer, the whispers multiplying and growing louder. There were so many voices… who were they? It's past victims? Were her friends amongst those voices? "C'mon, _work_!" she was hitting the flashlight repeatedly as the mists drew ever closer. The room was growing cold and stale. Too cold to _survive_.

More and more whispers joined the crowd and a vaguely head-like shape emerged from the mists. It was enormous. Too big to fit in the room. _Mother of God_… those eyes… tears poured down Raven's cheeks as the terror mounted. Her heart was threatening to break her tiny ribcage and threatening to simply give out at the same time. Striking the flashlight harder and harder, twisting to make the batteries give one final burst of light to drive the shadows away… Raven shouted one of her lyrics! "**_OLKAS_**!" she cried into the shadows. It roared and withdrew a few feet. Writhing and twisting in magic-induced agony, it folded into itself several times. Watching it do so made Raven feel ill, as though it were made of putty and misty-shadow at the same time.

_It kept coming._

Raven stared in horrified disbelief. It hadn't left her alone. The symbol hadn't worked! Wasn't it _powerful enough_! Raven's back was against the wall, and she slowly slid down into a huddled position. God… it was going to _take_ her. Drag her into darkness and feed on her soul. Raven whimpered as the shadows drew closer. "Oh Beast Boy…" she whispered, weeping softly. She drew her legs up to her chest as she crouched in the corner. "I _tried_…"

_Raven dropped the flashlight._

* * *

_Dun Dun DUUUUUHN! I hope you enjoyed this part of Raven's Game! How the hell is Raven gonna get out of this one! With no light and only one lyric left in her arsenal, she can't stand against the shapeless, whispering darkness. And, how are the others doing in the real world? Have they found the other symbols' lyrics yet? Well find out soon I hope, because I'm kinda making this up as I go along! Next up is part eleven, **Ixiam**! Please review if you have time, and I'll update really soon, n'kay? **N'kay**!_


	12. Ixiam

I'm back with part twelve of Raven's Game! Sorry to leave you hanging for so long! . Raven's in big trouble, so let's watch it unfold! I don't own Teen Titans!

* * *

Raven's Game 

Part 12: **Ixiam**

The flashlight struck the ground and came on very suddenly. The darkness squealed in a thousand different voices, an agony indescribable to Raven's ears. Seeing what was happening through her tears, Raven wrenched the magnifying glass out of the purse and picked up the flashlight. Passing the glass over the light she saw the beam brighten and broaden at the same time!

The shadow writhed and twisted in the light, recoiling away from her and across the room. The voices and whispers continued as it twisted this way and that, as though trying to decide on a shape for itself. Raven kept the beam trained on it, slowly rising to her shaking feet. Finally, she knew it was time to banish it from the room. "**MORTYM**!" The symbol on Cyborg's broken bench-pressing table flashed with every color of the rainbow. It illuminated the room and blinded Raven so badly she cried out! Falling to one side and clutching her eyes, she could only listen to the sounds of the shadow's screaming. God… that horrible _sound_…

_It was gone._

Raven lay there on the floor, desperately gasping for air. Blinded, seeing spots and trembling, she sat up. It would take a minute for her to be able to see straight again. Feeling the flashlight where she'd dropped it, she searched with her hands for the magnifying glass. "Oh no…" she murmured when she found it. It was broken. A few shards of glass here and there told her it had shattered when she'd fallen. It was no longer useful to her. Feeling a sort of odd attachment to it since it had saved her life, Raven picked up what was left of it and placed it in a separate compartment of the purse she was carrying.

It would take her some time to realize that **Olkas** had appeared on her upper arm and **Mortym** had shown up right around her chakra gem.

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"Friends, I have located the final symbol." Starfire had had the best luck out of the three. Both boys heard this and grinned from ear to ear. "It is also of Azar descent, as I guessed on the start of my search. Whatever creature lay confined in that cave… it was sealed there by people of Azar."

"People from Raven's home…?" Beast Boy wondered aloud, staring in disbelief. "They sealed that thing down there and didn't _tell anybody_!" It had been thousands of years ago, they all knew, but still. "You'd think we would've gotten a warning…" he mumbled softly.

"That's probably what all the writing on the wall was." Cyborg reminded him. "We just couldn't read it…" He fell into silence, feeling guilty that he had directly let the creature loose. If you could even call it that… It was a shadow, but there was more to it. "Well, show us what you found."

Starfire showed them what she'd found, all of her notes carefully rewritten in English. All twelve symbols, along with their translations and areas of origin. "These symbols appeared to be of Earthly origin, but I have discovered that humans merely borrowed them from the ancient wizards of Azar. They gave each symbol its own meaning as time went on, but it is my belief that these are the original meanings." She said a lot, pointing to each one in turn. "We must memorize these words in order, and recite them near where the creature was set free."

"We gotta go back down there?" Cyborg gaped at her.

"If it's to get Raven back, fine." Beast Boy said a little too quickly. They looked at him oddly, and he glared them down. "**What**?" when they said nothing, he spoke up again, "_Yeah I **like** he_r, okay? Got a _problem_ with it?" No one spoke up. Physically stopping and taking a deep breath, he tried to calm himself and speak again. "Show us, Star. Tell us each word so we can practice."

The red-head nodded soberly, and pointed to the first symbol. "This symbol is called Lussa…"

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Raven was seriously starting to wind down. Malnutrition, thirst, hunger, and paranioa were all weighing down on her. She'd somehow made it back to the common room alive, but not in great shape. The magnifying glass was broken, and she couldn't seem to summon her powers to fix it. Swallowing loudly to wet her dry throat, Raven heard her stomach growl at her. She groaned, holding it and almost doubling over. When had she eaten last? She didn't know. What she wouldn't have given for a cold glass of ice water… and a huge plate of… of… of **anything**! Beast Boy's tofu for all she cared! Raven sat gingerly on the love seat, holding her abdomen. She would grow too weak before long. All of her bodily needs were starting to get to her, and she wasn't thinking of the toilet.

Groaning softly, Raven looked down at herself. Torn clothes, dirty body, exposed chest… trinkets from all of her friends. Raven brightened just a little, grasping Starfire's locket in her hand. Opening it and looking at the smiling Tameranian, she gave a weak smile in return. Closing it and letting it fall between her breasts, Raven let her hands run along the buttons of the utility belt she'd picked up. She even traced the glass eye patch she'd constructed, thinking of Cyborg. Beast Boy's diary poked out of the purse she'd been carrying all that time. She stroked it gingerly. When she got back, she and Beast Boy would have a nice, long talk… she promised herself this, and it made her feel a bit better. She could listen to all the stupid jokes he could think up, and she would tie him up and make him listen to her read 'The Raven' aloud. That thought made her snort with quiet laughter, and she stood.

All the diary entries had been read, and only two symbols remained. There were only a few rooms left to search, too. And two friends to come and haunt her, Raven reminded herself. She frowned, deeply hurt that she'd thought that of her friends. The shadow was merely playing terrible tricks on her. She couldn't fall victim to something that merely looked like one of her friends. Raven remembered the serious adrenaline rush she'd gotten from fighting the spectral Starfire. All those rushes of energy and adrenaline were killing her, she knew. Eventually, her body wouldn't be able to take anymore, and it would simply give out. Whether she was finished collecting the symbols or not. Licking her dry lips for perhaps the hundredth time, Raven set out for the eleventh symbol, wherever it might be.

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"Okay, I think we've got it now." Beast Boy nodded, sitting cross-legged in Raven's room with Cyborg and Starfire. He rattled off the names of the symbols, ticking them off of his fingers as he went. Using his two feet for lyrics eleven and twelve, he looked at Starfire for approval. She nodded, telling that he had said the names right and in the right order.

"Let's rest for about an hour and we'll start down, okay?" Cyborg said. "Keep your doors open, and your binding symbols handy if you're alone." He looked much older than he usually did, and pinched his nose to surpress a headache.

"I already do." Beast Boy held up what looked like black crayons. "They go good on walls, if you guys want one." They said no, and he grudgingly put them back in his pocket.

"I will take my leave then." Starfire left Raven's room rather quickly. Beast Boy thought maybe she was rushing to see to a bodily need, but Cyborg knew better. She was in distress because Robin wasn't helping them.

The boy wonder wasn't exactly the type to go on a ghost hunt, but… he'd been pretty distant from them lately. Refusing to help in their research, constantly insulting Beast Boy until finally he'd given up. He'd been keeping a silent distance, angry with BB for his 'prank,' and angry at the others for believing him. Robin had taken to going out at night, looking futilely for Raven. Of course he hadn't found anything, but he felt like he was doing something about their missing teammate.

Starfire went to him, where he was currently watching TV alone. She approached at sat silently on the couch next to him. He regarded her with a neutral smile, then went back to the TV. What was on, Starfire didn't bother to look. She looked at Robin with eyes indescribable, and scooted closer. He didn't notice until she was sitting right next to him. She bravely leaned and lay her head on his shoulder, flushing deeply.

Robin tensed instinctively, not used to feminine contact. Letting the tension flow out of him as quickly as he could, he looked over at her. He'd hardly seen her in what felt like an eternity. She'd been off researching those damn symbols, refusing to stop when he'd come to visit her. Beast Boy's theory was correct, she kept saying. He'd gotten angry and left her alone at last, but… here she was now. "Stopping your research?" he asked neutrally, as not to upset her.

"We have found all the information we need." Starfire said, looking wary. "The vellum Beast Boy found was quite useful." She sat up straight again and looked over at him. Her eyes were wet and concerned. "Friend Robin, why do you not believe us? We have faced many a foe together before… what holds you back so?" The boy wonder stared at her for a long time. His eyes wandered her hair… her beautiful face… her strangely short eyebrows… "Many villians we have faced have been very unbelievable when told of in stories, but they are real too. This shadow is also real, friend Robin…" tears were forming in her eyes. His eyes portrayed nothing that resembled understanding, and a tear rolled down her cheek.

"Starfire, I–"

"You do not **care**!" She suddenly shouted at him, standing up. "I can see it in your eyes!" He stared at her in open shock. "You are too set in your ways to help us! We march on the home of the shadow creature at the top of the hour! It is deep in the cave that branches away from the basement!" he made to speak but she cut him off. "I have only one thing to say to you, Robin!" Starfire cried. She could find no words in Tameranian that could express her anger, and a sudden memory broke into her mind. Beast Boy had shouted it at her when his anger had jumped to new heights. The normally peaceful red head took a deep, angry breath and – "**SCREW YOU**!" she screamed in anguish, flying away as quickly as she could. She got out of the common room within two seconds, gone before Robin could say anything.

Robin's mouth hung open slightly, unable to believe what he'd just heard Starfire say. Where the hell had she learned to say that? Beast Boy stood in the doorway, watching her leave. "You taught her that." He accused angrily.

"…So what?" he said, not looking like he cared. Robin made to yell at him, but Beast Boy looked at him with such haunted eyes that he couldn't do it. He'd been awake for God knew how long, and it showed on his green features. What was happening to his team? He didn't know why, but Beast Boy's 'prank' was sounding less and less like a prank…

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Raven emerged into a room she barely ever visited. The Slade room. Robin had taken it over and turned it into a workstation for chasing after his greatest enemy. Saving the flashlight's weakened battery and using her dark-trained eyes, she scanned the room. It looked old and forgotten, like everything else in the tower. The walls were decaying with mold spots, and the usual stacks of paper looked ancient and moth-eaten. Rats had probably come and taken bits of paper for nests as well. She shuddered at the thought, looked carefully for a symbol. Robin himself hadn't been trusted with a symbol, but perhaps there was one in this room?

A Slade mask, taken from a fake robot Slade, hung on the wall staring at her. It's empty eye looked at her and seemed to follow her around the room. She went and took it down from the wall, turning it over. No symbol there. She frowned, sighing softly. Of course it couldn't be that easy. Beast Boy would've left a puzzle or something for her. She couldn't merely find it. That would be too easy. She grumbled irritably, placing it on the desk.

There were dozens of old newspaper articles taped on the walls. They were ancient and yellowed, most of them in little ratty piles on the floor. Raven reached to touch one, and it came apart when her finger grazed it. The desk was covered with papers, old pens and charts of the city with 'S' marks here and there.

Looking around with 'red vision,' Raven spotted a picture of Starfire sitting on the desk.

Probably Robin's, Raven decided. He kept her near even when he was obsessing over his enemy. She shook her head, a half-smile coming to her face. Reaching and dusting the dust off of the picture frame's glass. Robin, Starfire, and Cyborg were in that picture. Cyborg was in the picture merely to give Robin bunny ears, and Starfire had her arm around his waist. He was in the process of blushing and trying to ignore Cyborg. Raven smiled gently at the faded photo. Who had been behind the camera? She couldn't remember. Blinking a few times, she went pale. There was a dab of Beast Boy's special ink on the picture frame's edge. Sighing and picking it up, Raven turned it over and shut the eye that had no red glass over it. She frowned deeply at what she saw, and almost dropped the picture frame. The lettering was a brighter red than she had seen before, almost like blood. Trying not to think about that particular word, she read the message over again:

_Three of many_

_Three TOO MANY._

That sure as hell wasn't Beast Boy's writing. Was it Robin's? Cyborg's? Beast Boy was the only one using the secret ink, right? She didn't know… taking out beast Boy's diary, she compared the handwriting from the last entry with the haunting message. "It matches…" Raven whispered in disbelief. Beast Boy had probably written it mere hours before… Raven squashed that line of thought and slid the back of the picture frame off. Putting Beast Boy's diary back in the purse, she set the back of the picture frame aside… and found her prize. The symbol itself was in permanent marker, looking like an upward arrow with two line drawn through the stem. Raven shut one eye so she could see the word in 'red vision.'

**IXIAM** (ecks-eye-am)

"Ixiam…" Raven murmured. The symbol pulsed with every color of the rainbow, as though in response to its name. Raven looked herself over, and at last found Ixiam in her left palm. Mumbling to herself in nonsense words, she took the picture itself from the frame. Turning it to look at the back, she found handwriting she didn't recognize:

_Starfire Robin Cyborg_

**_R.I.P._**

Raven recoiled, dropping the photograph. She turned when something caught her eye. There was writing all over the walls that hadn't been there moments ago!

_Dark now_

_In mind_

_No eyes_

_Blind eyes_

_See you_

_Only **YOU**_

The same message, over and over, was splattered all over the walls in what Raven knew was dripping blood. She pursed her lips, refusing to scream. Her heart was revving up, and she waited. If there was no direct threat, she wouldn't use the newfound word yet. Only if it attacked her directly. Squeezing her eyes shut for a moment, she started forward and out of the room. The words oozed all around her, taking new shape.

_Murder_

_Rape_

_Insanity_

_Suicide_

_The end of all things_

_**R.I.P.** Raven_

The words got worse, dribbling down the walls only to reform themselves perfectly. But they were still only words, she reasoned. _Sticks and stones_, Raven reminded herself stonily. Her entire body was trembling as she finally crossed the threshold and out into the hall. The words of blood oozed onto the carpet and Raven turned. The river of blood was coming towards her. Raven squinted from under her eyebrows and reached for the utility belt. She threw a pair of freezer disks with a flourish, and the red liquid froze on the spot. Looking satisfied, she heaved the door shut. It was almost over. _It was almost over…_ Her shoulders sagging tiredly, Raven left the room alone to ooze all it wanted. Damn that shadow… _thing_…

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_That was part twelve. Raven only has one symbol to go! But wait! Remember what Beast Boy's Diary said about Starfire being snatched away first? Will she be alive long enough for Raven to come to the rescue? Or will the shadowy creature consume her? Next time, Raven will hunt for the final symbol, and darkness will cast itself upon the Titan's Tower… in the real world. Next time, its the final symbol,**Raka**! Stay tuned!_

_P.S. Somehow, Starfire shouting "Screw you!" Just seemed hilarious to me. I hope I didn't kill the scary mood with that!_


	13. Raka

_Hello again! Back for more scary fun, are you? N'kay! I won't disappoint! However, there is something I need to address. The whispers they're hearing. There seems to be some confusion amongst my readers as to what that is. The whispers and shadow that Raven sees is the creature itself, just so you know. The fake Beast Boy, Raven, bloody words, and all that other stuff were solid illusions. The whispers warn that the shadow-thing **itself** is nearby, okay? Okay! Glad I got that cleared up! I don't own Teen Titans!_

_P.S. Has anyone noticed that some of the events in Beast Boy's diary actually **conflict** with what's happening in the real world? I did that on purpose, just so you know. I couldn't tell the entire story, right at the beginning, through the diary! That would give it all away! Okay, on with the show…_

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Raven's Game 

Part 13: Raka

Starfire was running down the hall, weeping into her hands. She wasn't paying attention to where she was going and ran straight into Cyborg. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, Star!" He said, grabbing her shoulders to steady her. "What's wrong?" She said nothing and buried her face in his broad chest. She was speaking, but her sobbing and whimpering made it come out as gibberish that he couldn't understand. "Calm down now…" he stroked her hair once (in a friendly sort of way). "What happened?"

"Friend Robin does not believe us at all." She whispered, tears still running down her cheeks. "He does not believe we are to battle the darkness for friend Raven…"

"It's alright." He said, rubbing her upper arms like a best friend. "We got all the lyrics, and we don't need him. If he wants to stay out of it, _let him_. Raven can beat him up when we get her back." That image actually brought a wry smile to Starfire's face. "_There's_ that smile." He said, poking the underside of her chin to make her look up at him. "Chin up, Star."

"Guys." Beast Boy had arrived. He looked at the both evenly, and they nodded. "It's time. We gotta go get Raven back. Are you two ready?" They nodded hesitantly. It was now or never.

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Raven reread Beast Boy's diary, just be sure she hadn't missed anything. Then, she remembered the letter from the suitcase in the attic. It had said there was something in the evidence room. What had he called it…? _Vellum_? Wasn't that a fancy term for _animal skin_? Raven couldn't imagine how Beast Boy had reacted when he'd seen that. But… it the real order of the symbols was written on this 'vellum,' then she would have to go get it and piece it back together. And, with some luck, see the final symbol. If they were all on the vellum, then she would see all twelve and get the final one simultaneously. Raven wondered why she hadn't simply gone for the vellum when she'd first heard about it… but then she remembered she'd needed the lyrics to the symbols as well. So, she would've had to hunt for them individually either way.

Sighing, Raven set out for the evidence room. Just as she was about to exit the common room, the phone rang. Raven jumped, then turned with a growl. More tricks and foolery? Stomping over the phone, she picked it up, "It's not like you to pull the same trick twice, whatever the hell you are." She said, grinning from under her eyebrows. "What is it this time?" What Raven heard on the other end of the line wasn't anywhere near what she expected.

_"Help us…"_

_"Save us **please**…"_

_"God save us all…"_

_"It's so dark…"_

_"Who's there…?"_

"Oh Jesus, I'm scared…" 

_"HELP US…"_

The line went dead after that. Raven went paler than usual. She hadn't recognized _any_ of the voices on the line… One of them had been British, another Irish… none of them modern-day. God, they were so _real_… were they the shadow-thing's victims? From far in the past? Living in its twisted being, screaming for help to deaf ears? Her hand shaking, Raven hung up the phone. "Help is on the way…" she whispered, looking at the phone as though it might talk back. Turning with a flourish, Raven left the common room.

Making her way carefully down the stairwell and to the floor the evidence room was on, she found herself at the door. Heaving a deep sigh, she pushed the door open. Turning the flashlight on and peering both ways down the hall, she stepped inside. A huge array of random items greeted her. Some where under glass, others hung on the wall, still others on pedestals or even hanging from the _ceiling_. Raven remembered when her fear had taken over after a frightening movie one night, and the Titans had come to this room. Cyborg had said, 'What are we looking for?' and Robin had replied –

"Something that doesn't belong…" Raven murmured, surveying her surroundings with careful eyes. The three computer chips 'Red X' had stolen, Control Freak's remote, several HIVE academy artifacts, Slade's heat gun, one of Mad Mod's canes, a small chunk of Cinderblock… and so many other things greeted her Raven took a long time striding down memory lane. Each thing she came across pulled up a memory like a computer file, and she offered a small smile. As a team, they had quite the collection now. They'd been through so much together, she thought soberly. And yet, here she was trying to save them. All alone. She shivered, feverishly pulling her torn cloak close to her body. Being torn, it offered her no comfort. Her stomach took that opportunity to growl and complain loudly. Raven winced, holding her abdomen. It was getting bad. _Really bad_. God… she was _starving_. And starting to _dehydrate_. Gasping for breath and trying to straighten up, Raven spotted something she hadn't seen in the evidence room before.

_Terra's heart-shaped mirror box._

Immiediatly, Raven knew that's what she wanted. Like almost everything else it was under glass, though. Raven played with Robin's utility belt for a few moments, looking through all the gadgets. "Ah ha…" she mumbled, drawing out a glass-cutter. She didn't want to throw one of his exploding disks and damage the prize within. Pressing hard against the glass, she drew a large circle and poked it in the center. The glass popped inward, a perfectly circular piece. Raven reached in and pulled out the artifact, and found it to be without dust. Nodding to herself, she went to another display case and set it down. Setting the flashlight down on its butt so it lit most of the room, she carefully reached and pulled it open. Her face greeted her, looking tired and dirty in the mirror that was in the lid. Raven peered inside and found a piece of paper. Actually allowing herself a full smile, she snatched it. This was it, the final symbol. It was all hers n –

_It wasn't anything pertaining to the symbol she sought._

"What's this…?" Raven whispered. It was Beast Boy's handwriting, but it wasn't what she was expecting. "A letter… to _Terra_?" she stared in open shock, but she opened it anyway. It was dated several months after Terra had been turned to stone, she noticed.

_Terra,_

_I'm sorry, but I have to give up on you now. I promised I would never forget you and that's a promise I'll always keep, but… if we brought you back, things would never be the same. You couldn't be a Titan anymore, even with Slade gone. And… you and I couldn't be together either._

_I've… I've fallen in love with Raven. Yeah, yeah I know. "Big scary dark Raven? What do you see in her?" Well, I see a lot of great things. She cares for everyone around her, even though she barely shows it. Her eyes always tell me what she's really thinking, though. Raven might be dark and morbid most of the time, yeah, but… I like her a lot now that I know her. _

_She's a 'forbidden fruit,' Terra. I know that. But… forbidden fruit always tastes sweeter when you win it. Or taste it. I can't believe I just wrote that…_

_Uhm… so I guess this is goodbye. I'm no good at this kind of stuff. But then again, you'll never read this letter, will you? You're a stone statue, way down in that cave. I'll still visit you now and then, but… as a couple and as a teammate… Goodbye Terra. You were the best friend I ever had. Rest in peace._

_Beast Boy_

Raven stared in shock and awe. Fallen in love? With _her_? **_Raven_**? Beast Boy's diary had flirted with the idea, and told of a few heated dreams, but this letter… it was so… _mature_ the way he went about saying it. Forbidden fruit? What an analogy… Raven heaved a wary sigh, folding the letter up again. Yet another revelation to discuss with one of her teammates when the time came. The sudden thought occurred to her… _did she like him back_? Seeing all of these puzzles laid out by him, all the letters and scribbles, diary entries and clues… had her opinion of him drifted into strange new realms? Raven felt a slight twinge of heat on her cheeks, and she touched one with her hand. She was blushing. Blushing while she thought of the green teen… looks like the answer was yes, she thought.

Placing the letter neatly back into the mirror box, Raven ceremonially placed it back where it belonged. There was no symbol or puzzle in there, so she would have to keep searching. But wait… she stopped and turned, pulling it back out into her hands. Holding her breath, Raven turned it upside down.

**RAKA **(_Rah-kah_)

Both symbol and word were present, without the use of the 'red vision.' Raka was one of those number fours with a line through the end of it. It looked a great deal like Morcana, but still different in its own right. "Raka…" Raven whispered, holding it at arm's length. Beams of light erupted from the symbol, straight onto Raven's chest. It tore the material covering her chest, and the symbol was emboldened onto her skin. The fabric gave out, exposing all of her left breast save the nipple. "How did I _know_ one was going to end up there…?" Raven grumbled, but she was still happy. Setting the mirror box down, she looked herself over. "All twelve. I have all twelve symbols…" She whispered, looking at each one in turn. She took her shoes off so she could see the one's on her feet, and then looked in the mirror of the box. Mortym was decorated around her chakra gem, and she offered her image a small smile. How stupid did she feel, covered with writing once again? Last time it had warned of the end of the world, but this time… this time it was to save her friends.

_Her friends, and all the victims that had come before them._

Raven suddenly realized the finaly symbol wasn't over her breast to be pointing at her breast, but her _heart_. Raka was over the left side of her chest, directly over her heart. Nodding and feeling a little more comfortable with it, Raven picked up the flashlight. She accidentally dinged the mirror-box in the process and winced when the mirror fell out. Hadn't Beast Boy glued it in there –?

**_You'll find the vellum under the carpet._**

Raven stared, dumbfounded. No riddle? No trick words or oddly spelled ones? Just _boom_, like that? She remembered suddenly what Beast Boy's letter had told her. ((_You'll find its exact location with the last symbol you find.)) _Incredible. He'd been right. Raka had been the final symbol she'd found, and here she was ready to find the vellum. Marveling at how intricately Beast Boy had planned everything out, Raven mumbled to herself as she looked the carpet beneath her feet. Squinting, she saw that the pattern was slightly off. Stepping back and squatting down, she found part of it had been cut up. Reaching with chilled hands, she pulled two hidden flaps back. There, laying in pieces, was the vellum. It looked like parchment, like from Raven's ancient scrolls, but… it looked more _alive_.

She reached and carefully gathered then up. Placing them slowly on the glass case after she'd hastily wiped the dust off of it, Raven made sure she had all the pieces. Carefully refolding the flaps of the carpet, she licked her dry lips. It was like a puzzle. She could see one symbol here, and another there. But, it still needed to be reassembled so it could be understood. Pulling the flashlight closer so she could see better, Raven began working on her final puzzle.

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Beast Boy heaved a deep sigh, looking at Cyborg embarassedly. "I kinda… _bashed it open_ so I could go down there again." The metal man didn't look at all offended. He looked straight into the darkness. They were in the basement, standing outside the timed vent that Beast Boy had bashed open earlier. Making sure Starfire and Beast Boy had helmets with lights on them, he let his shoulder light pop up and turn on.

"Let's finish this and get our friend back." Cyborg said.

"I am eager to open a can of the 'butt-whoop' on our enemy." Starfire said soberly. "Let us march into battle." She hadn't been joking, either. She was ready to tear the tower apart for her lost friend, but she was down in the darkness of the cave… lost to the rest of the world. Her best friend needed her, and now was the time to act.

Beast Boy, Starfire, and Cyborg emerged into the cave. The green teen became a fierce tiger, ready for anything the darkness might dish out. Starfire prepared her starbolts, lighting the cave in a green glow. Cyborg's sonic cannon activated, and he held his forearm to aim as they went on. Beast Boy's cat-eyes saw farther than any of them…

_So he was the first to see them._

He roared his challenge and charged forward! Thousands and thousands of spectral monsters were coming for them, straight out of that square hall Beast Boy had found. ((A/N: think like the ghosts under the library in "The End" and save us all some time, okay?)) Some had claws, others had cloaks and scythes, all of them were ready to kill. The green teen saw red, and the battle was on.

Cyborg rapid-fired into the crowd as it approached, covering Beast Boy as he darted among them. Starfire blasted starbolt after starbolt, the righteous fury making her eyes glow green. The specters simply came apart… only to reform like a dark mist. For the first time in his life, Beast Boy struck to kill. His claws tore mercilessly through spirit after spirit after spirit. He saw Cyborg's beam cannon blowing them apart, but they always reformed as though they were made of smoke.

He saw one of them slash at him just in time, and he darted out of the way. His huge tiger body was big, but it was also fast. Once he landed he spun to attack again. He trampled over half a dozen of the specters, roaring with teeth and claw and a fury unlike anything he'd ever known. _They were keeping him from Raven_. _Raven needed him_. **_Now_**. They suddenly dog-piled on him and he became a T-rex to throw them off! His roar of battle shook both the cave and the Titan's Tower. Simply biting down on the enemies that seemed to be made of smoke, he swept them away with his tail. They kept coming though. More and more and more… _endlessly_.

Cyborg grunted, keeping an eye on the coolant system in his beam cannon. He wouldn't run out of power for a few hours or so at this rate, but if his weapon overheated… He didn't want to think about it. He was too busy fighting for his life. More and more of those things kept coming, right from the direction they needed to go. Firing his beam cannon and breaking stalactites on the ceiling, he watched them crush his foes… only to have them seep out of the wreckage like smoke. Growling in frustration, he aimed his beam cannon to try again.

Starfire ruled the air, blasting creature after shadowy creature. They would screech and fly through the air to get her, only to be hit with another blast of green energy. "Ha! _Ha_! **_HAH_**!" Starfire formed her green dome and exploded it outward. There was a hissing of many fallen spirits… but they were back soon enough. The red head landed near Cyborg and Beast Boy, looking fatigued. "Friends! Our tactics are not working! They are _invulnerable_!"

"They must be guarding the shrine I saw!" Beast Boy said, human again. "We have to push past them!" He ducked the whistling scythe that was meant to take his head off. He became a bear and slashed the spirit to pieces. Becoming human again, he said, "We have to get to the shrine to recite the lyrics!"

"_There's too many of 'em_!" Cyborg had a constant stream of his sonic cannon going. "Each one we take down two more show up!" He was sweating and starting to tire. Even the mighty metal man had his limits. A lock of Starfire's hair flew through the air and she shrieked in fear, barely dodging a set of long claws.

"We have to get there, no matter what." Beast Boy whispered.

"Man, I don' think we're going anywhere…" Cyborg whispered back as the ghosts started pressing in on them. Their black, cold sockets stared with bloodlust. They weren't just guardians. They were there to destroy all threats that came.

"We must press towards the shrine, then." Starfire said softly, though she didn't sound very sure of herself. There were so many of them…

_They were surrounded._

* * *

_We're coming to the climax, people! Raven has all the symbols and the others are marching into the darkness to save her. And what about Robin? Will he show upto help fight the ghosts and the darkness that sired them? Maybe. There's only like three parts left in this story, you guys. It's almost over! Next time on Raven's Game, **One Thousand Guardians**! Get ready!_


	14. One Thousand Guardians

_Here I am again! I didn't want to keep anyone waiting for long. Many people are really enjoying this story, so I decided to post two parts at once. Yay! Less reviews, but yay anyways! People like it when more than one part gets posted at the same time, so here you go! I don't own Teen Titans!_

* * *

Raven's Game

Part 14: **_One Thousand Guardians_**

"_There_." Raven had finished reassembling the vellum. She saw all twelve symbols, all at the same time. "Wait… this is the order they go in?" Her brow furrowed. Making double-sure she'd pieced everything together correctly, she stared at the completed puzzle in shock. They were in the same order she'd found them in! "Lussa, Kars, Oliviak…" she mumbled down the list, heaving a sigh. "Now what am I supposed to–"

_A spike of pure shadow pierced her body, spraying blood across the vellum!_

Raven screamed in unholy agony, wrenching away. Clutching her abdomen and hyper-ventilating in pain, she looked up through tear-blurred eyes. "Oh God…" she whispered. She was sprawled helplessly against the display case, in severe pain.

The shadow had come for her. Thousands of whispers accompanied it. It was a giant, teeming mass of sharp spines and eyes. I slithered along the ground, no feet to speak of, in a giant messy blob. It had no definite shape… it just kept changing at will. Raven groaned, but refused to take her eyes off of her enemy. "**_Raaaaaaaaaaavennnnnnnn_**……" It's eyes glowed red, and an icy shiver went down her spine. She began shaking uncontrollably.

"Lussa." Raven whispered, swallowing. She was bleeding badly. She had to finish it… finish it while she still could. The shadow flinched hard at the word, as though it had been struck by lightning.

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Starfire, Beast Boy, and Cyborg whispered amongst themselves for perhaps ten seconds before they had to fight again. Cyborg grabbed Beast Boy and hunkered down like a shield. "NOW!" He cried. Starfire threw her hands up to cast her dome attack, but was suddenly slashed across the arm. She cried out in pain, doubling over and clutching it.

"Ouch…" she stood to do it again, but had to dodge. Their hasty plan had failed, and they would die fighting –

_A hail of exploding pellets blew a ten-foot radius of specters away._

A shadow flashed back and forth amongst the ghosts, and they fell to pieces at the rage of a bow-staff. A sonic disk skittered across the floor and more of them were blown into their smokey state again. A young, gallant boy skidded to a halt, near the red head. He gasped for breath a few times, seeing the look of disbelief his team was giving him. "Sorry I'm late." Robin said, offering an apologetic smile. "I heard a T-rex roar." He cast Beast Boy a grin. The green teen's eyes filled with happiness, as did the metal man's and the red-head's. "I'm with you…" The enemy had already reformed and was coming for them in a wave of claws and scythes. "**_Titans go_**!" He roared. All three of them stood proud for battle as their leader led them straight onward.

Depositing pellets into his hands Robin threw them with a flourish. They exploded here and there, dispersing spirit after spirit into their smokey state. They would reform in a few moments. He noticed this and desperately tried to think of a plan for battle. "What can we do! They're already dead!"

"One of us has to get to the shrine at the end of that hall!" Cyborg shouted, sweeping his sonic cannon across a crowd of specters. "The three of us know the spell to seal all of 'em away, but we gotta _get there_ first!"

Starfire, who was still bleeding from the arm, had slowed considerably. She was Tameranian, but she was still feminine. Her limits came much faster than the boys' did sometimes. And this was one of those times. She was barely fast enough to even dodge anymore. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her newly beloved Robin dancing amongst his foes, his weapon flashing to slay them all. Her heart swelled with happiness –!

_A set of claws tore into her shoulder and collarbone. _

Starfire screamed in agony, flying back and hitting the stone wall. She fell with a yelp, unmoving and bleeding. The specters closed in on her, and she moaned as she tried to find her senses. His heart beating desperately, Robin let out a cry of battle! Cyborg put his hands together and made springboard for the boy wonder. Robin flew over the crowd and landed near the beautiful Tameranian girl. "The first one to touch her _dies_." He said, twirling his staff and standing at her side. Rooting himself between them and her, he almost didn't noticed elephant Beast Boy ramming through the shadowy guardians. He trumpeted wildly, an angry Cyborg riding and blasting from his back.

Beast Boy shrank back to normal as Cyborg leapt off. "We don't have time for this!" Beast Boy roared as the enemy drew closer. Cyborg blasted the next wave away, but that only bought them a few moments before the next wave would come. "We have to get down that hall, not stand here and fight 'til we're **DEAD!**"

Starfire sat up, shaking her head. "_Oh_…" she groaned, holding her wound. She was down to half of her strength, and only one of her arms would obey her. "It hurts…" she whispered, almost falling to her knees at the pain. Robin shouldered her so she could stay up, but couldn't keep his eyes on her. There was too much going on. Cyborg blasted another wave of spirits away, but they were getting smarter. They came in quicker, smaller waves now to keep them off-guard.

Cyborg looked down the hall, maybe fifty feet away. The rubble of the broken stone was still there, the hallway just beyond it… It was a straight shot… The metal man turned and looked at Robin soberly. Then, he spoke the words that would be their final plan of attack. "I got the sonic… _if you got the boom_." Robin stared at him for only a moment, then nodded. "Starfire, we'll clear a path. Use your good arm and throw Beast Boy down the hall." The red-head and green teen nodded. "Sorry man, but you gotta finish this on your own." He touched his best friend's shoulder, then wrenched around to blow another wave of the guardians away.

"Carve me a path, buddy." He said softly, tears making his eyes shine. He turned to Starfire. "Throw me as hard as you can, Star." He turned into an armadillo and rolled into a perfect ball. The armored creature would be okay so long as it didn't strike a stone wall head on. Letting go of her wound and taking a deep breath, Starfire held him with one hand.

"Ready?"

"_Ready_!"

"**_TITANS GO_**!" _Time slowed down like it would in a Matrix movie. Tiny sparkles of energy gathered in Cyborg's sonic cannon. Robin seemed to float through the air as he leapt, twin disks between his fingers. Starfire was winding up to pitch the green ball that was Beast Boy…_

The blast was devastating and Titan's Tower shook on its foundations! And then, through the fire and destruction, flew a green armadillo. It landed in the perfectly smooth hallway, bounced a few times, and became Beast Boy again. He tumbled with a cry of pain, twisting his ankle in process. Running as quickly as he could, he pressed onward to his destination.

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"Kars. Oliviak." Raven whimpered the words, but they were still powerful. She was bleeding so badly… she pressed her cloak desperately against the wound. Stop the bleeding, stop the bleeding… The shadow writhed and tried to escape. "_Frenic_!" The symbol for Frenic appeared, enormous, on the wall. The shadow hissed, unable to escape that way. "_Morcana_!" Raven grunted, thrusting out her hand. "_Tyma_! _Malus_! _Larsus_!" The walls each had a symbol. "_Olkas_! _Mortym_!" The ceiling and floor matched, and the shadow screamed in desperation. Raven felt a little tug, right behind her navel. "**_Ixiam_**…" she groaned, falling to the floor. Her blood was gathering on the carpet. The shadow couldn't take anymore. It was time to **_make_** her leave. It was no longer a game to be played. She only had one word left to say in the final recitation…

_Raven fell out of the game world, and into the real one_.

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Beast Boy ran as fast as his twisted ankle would allow, which was a galloping limp. He passed endless amounts of Azar writing, all of it describing and warning others away from what was up ahead. He arrived at the shrine, and it was more horrible than he remembered.

_It was a semi-circle shaped room, and there was a well in the middle. Green and black mist hovered around it like an oozing, spectral trail. Four columns held the roof up, but looked equally disturbing. Each had a faceless, stone statue leaning out of it.Their arms seemed to be out in offering, a stream of green was spouting lazily from each one. A smokey substance than looked like Starfire's powers in liquid form was coming out of each one. Four bottomless bowls were there, one under each fountain. The columns themselves had hundreds of eye-less faces carved into them, and they all seemed to be staring at him. _

Beast Boy shuddered, coming closer. The ancient stones tha made up the walls, columns, and well seemed to pulse at his presence. He came and got a closer look at one of the bowls of green goo.

_"Help us…"_

_"Save us **please**…"_

_"God save us all…"_

_"It's so dark…"_

_"Who's there…?"_

"Oh Jesus, I'm scared…" 

_"HELP US…"_

They all seemed to be talking all at once. He couldn't make much sense out of them, and quickly turned towards his goal. The well. "I want Raven back. _Now_!" He threw his hands into the air, making to say the first symbol. A giant portal suddenly split open on one of the walls, and Raven tumbled through with a cry of pain! Crashing to the ground and clutching her wound, she made herself stand and hobble over near the well. Beast Boy stared in dumbfounded disbelief. "Raven…?" he whispered, tears in his eyes.

Raven turned with a sharp glare, as though he were an enemy. But… he was crying to the sight of her… he was the real deal, she suddenly knew. "Beast Boy…" she tried to go to him, but staggered and fell. He rushed forward and caught her, seeing the horrible state she was in. She was dirty, bloody, sweating, and trembling. Her lips were moving, though… He quickly leaned down, putting his pointed ear near her lips. "The… last symbol…" she whispered, tears of pain pouring from her eyes. "Say it…… finish it…"

The darkness exploded from the well, knocking them both back against the wall! Crying out on impact they slid to the floor as it emerged in all its unholy glory. A thrashing, misty darkness that knew no mercy. Its claws were of quicksilver, bubbling and changing every second. Its skin was indefinable, swirling and bubble in a spectral, smokey state. Its horrible red eyes pierced them both to their very souls, haunting them forever with its lust to feed on souls. Its mouth, a horrible thing filled with teeth sharper than razors, came open –!

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"_Aagh_!" Robin hit the wall with a grunt, a giant bruise appearing on his chest and back. Starfire twirled, going full-auto with her star bolts. More and more spirits fell, but more and more were coming. Cyborg was starting to wear down his batteries, and wouldn't be able to go for much longer. There were simply too many. What was taking Beast Boy **_so long_**?

Starfire's powers gave, and she fell to the ground on her hands and knees. Near Robin, she looked over at him with tears budding in her eyes. "I… cannot… fight… anymore…" she said between gasps. "Robin…" she passed out completely. The boy wonder crawled desperately to where she lay, cradling her in his arms.

"Starfire…" he whispered. A misty shadow cast itself upon them, and he looked up. He had no more to give either. He'd tried as hard as he could, but this was the end. The gargoyle-like creature raised its scythe high. Robin clutched at the beautiful Tameranian, bending over her with tears in his eyes. "_I love you_…" he whispered.

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The creatures teeth dripped with the green, shadow goo Beast Boy had seen earlier. Raven clutched his hand, and he looked down at her. She was wear what looked like a red glass eyepatch on her face, and symbols covered her body. Quickly looking back at his enemy, he saw it raising a mighty set of claws. It was going to hack them both to pieces with one swipe. Cradling the bleeding Raven in his arms, Beast Boy quickly drew breath.

_"Raka…."_

* * *

_What happens next? **What happens next**? Aaaaah! Its almost over, peeps! Beast Boy has finished Raven's incantation. Starfire and Robin are about to die. Cyborg's power cell is failing. Raven is bleeding to death. Next time on Raven's Game! It's **GAME OVER**! See ya there!_


	15. Game Over!

_I don't own Teen Titans!_

* * *

Raven's Game

Part 15: **_Game Over_**

Robin looked up just in time to see an explosion of light lance out of the hallway, lighting up the cave like the forth of July! He bent over Starfire, protecting her with his body as best he could. Screams and cries of death were all around him. God, that _sound_…Cyborg staggered blindly, falling and clutching his head.

The thousands and thousands of ghosts dissipated, leaving them alone forever. There was a long silence, a few rocks falling from the ceiling. The light faded, and only Cyborg's shoulder light remained. All that Starfire could hear was someone breathing. Breathing on her. She opened her eyes, her vision blurred and dark. Robin was leaned over her, tears running down his cheeks. "Friend… Robin…?" she whispered softly.

"Starfire…?" He whispered in disbelief. He hugged her gently, and she buried her face in his chest. She wept softly, happy to be alive.

"He did it…" Cyborg whispered, staring at his friend.

"No." A new voice made itself known, and all three of them turned. "**_We_** did it." It was Beast Boy! He was limping, holding an unconscious Raven in his arms. Holding her by the backs of her knees and neck, he walked carefully amongst the rubble so he would drop her. "C'mon." he said. "Let's get out of here."

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"Starfire and Robin are in sick bay." Cyborg said, watching Beast Boy lay Raven gently on the couch. He placed several blankets under her, and got a good look at her wound. It was in her stomach, but… "Whoa…" Cyborg said. Before their very eyes, it sealed up all by itself. "She must be healing herself from the inside out." Beast Boy nodded. "Well… I'm glad that's… _over_…" Cyborg's battery gave out, and he sagged forward.

Beast Boy ran and caught him, turning into a gorilla. Quickly and carefully, he took the metal man to his room and hooked him up to his charge-table. He'd be okay in a few hours or so. Running back to the common room, he collapsed on the floor next to Raven. She lay silent on the couch, her eyes closed. He stopped and got a good look at her.

The symbols on her body had vanished when he'd spoken Raka, so her skin was normal again. Her clothes were in tatters, though. Beast Boy found himself blushing at the amount of skin that was showing. Her cloak was torn straight down the middle, and the hood was completely gone. Her shoes were missing as well, how weird was _that_? Had she taken them off somewhere? She was dirty, bloodstained, and she gave a soft moan in her sleep. He leaned forward and slowly… slowly reached for her. Putting a lock of her hair out of her eyes, he knew what he had to do.

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Raven awoke to the feel of a warm, wet washcloth. She moaned aloud, her eyes opening. A green blur was leaned over her, gently patting her cheek. "Beast… Boy…?" she whispered.

"Shhh…" he said softly. "Save your energy for eating. Your stomach's been talking for almost an hour." She cracked a tiny smile, but not much else. He gently, gently massaged her charringen gem with the steaming washcloth, and she groaned in pleasure. It was… _so warm_… "Don't fall asleep, Rae." He whispered softly as her eyes drooped. "You have to eat something first." She agreed wholeheartedly, and a familiar scent wafted under her nose.

"Chicken noodle soup…?" she whispered, trying not to laugh and sap her strength.

"Its just broth." Beast Boy said softly. "You can eat something solid later, I promise." He took her hands (her heart leapt) and placed them around a cup, gently pulling her into a reclined sitting position. It was one of those factory-sized, plastic cups with a twist-on top. The warmth in it spilled into her hands as she held it, tingling the nerves and reminding her of what warmth felt like. It had been so long since she'd felt it… there was a broad straw sticking out, the golden liquid inside just waiting for her. She eagerly started on it, the warm glow filling her belly almost immiediatly.

"How long have I been gone…?" she whispered when she had to stop and take a breath.

"About three days." Beast Boy mumbled, bashfully rubbing the grime from her collarbone. So close to her breasts, he didn't want to make her angry at a time like this. "I was… we were… really worried about you, Raven." He said, wringing out the rag and dipping it an a bowl again. Wringing it out a second time, he started on her cheek.

Raven blushed, but didn't say anything as she kept sucking on the straw. _He was so tender with her… _Her blush deepened and he drew away, seeing her look. "Don't stop…" she whispered hesitantly, looking at him. He looked at he for a long time, and a gentle smile graced his green features. He wrung the rag out, dipped it, and wrung it out again. He returned to her with its steaming warmth, making her groan as he rubbed it along the back of her neck. She almost dropped her cup of broth, "_Beast_ _Boy_…" she moaned his name. Her tone alone made his heart leap into his throat.

By the time the broth was halfway gone, he had done pretty much all he dared. He'd removed her cloak, seeing the ragged shape was in, and had only exposed more skin. Her clothes wouldn't cover her decently for much longer. "What is all this, Rae?" He whispered. He'd taken the pink purse, which he recognized as Starfire's, and was sifting through it. The glass eye lay on the couch next to her. "A broken magnifying glass, a flashlight… _my diary_? Where'd you get –!" He looked up and saw she was already asleep. "Raven…" he whispered, his eyebrows drawing together with concern. She looked at peace, though. And to Beast Boy, that's what counted.

Warily eyeing his Diary, he pulled it into his hands. "When did she get ahold of _you_?" he asked the little book. "Hey, what the…" He trailed away.

_The book was empty._

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Raven awoke again, this time in her own room. Her door was wide open, and the soft sound of someone breathing was nearby. The digital clock read around 3AM, neon green lettering. She looked for the source, and found Beast Boy sitting in a chair next to her bed. A thin blanket was draped over him, and an Archie comic book lay open to one side, face down on the floor. A half-eaten sandwich was sitting on the end table, where a lamp was on one click. His head was bowed forward, soft snores coming from him in even intervals.

Raven looked under the covers at herself, and found her clothes renewed. She was in her dark blue flannel pajamas, the ones the others had never seen her wearing. _Had he_ –? No… it was probably Starfire, she decided. He wasn't _that_ brave. Still feeling hungry Raven snatched the sandwich and ate it. He'd wonder where it went, but he'd forgive her later. Laying there staring at the ceiling, Raven turned and looked at him again. He'd been there all night, she knew. He'd probably gotten no more sleep than she in the past few days, yet here he was now. Watching over her. Sitting up gingerly, still tired and aching, she touched his shoulder. His eyes slitted open, and he offered a tiny smile. "Sorry for trespassing…" He mumbled, half-asleep. Raven gave him a small smile, knowing how much he'd always wanted to see what her room looked like.

Raven's mind was a whirlwind of different emotions. She'd read his diary, seen all the messages he'd left for her in the game world, and watched him battle darkness at her side in the real one. Was… wasn't he worthy of affection? She spotted all the items she'd gathered from the game on the floor near the door, neatly laid out for display. A meager attempt at reassembling the magnifying glass was apparent, for all the pieces had been placed inside the metal ring that was meant to hold them together. The diary looked flipped through, and the red eye patch had a fingerprint on it. Starfire's necklace lay neatly next to them, and Robin's utility belt was also present. "You were with me the whole time." She reached and touched his cheek. He unexpectedly leaned his head into it, and she cupped his face. He inhaled her scent silently, his heart beating against his ribcage.

"I'm so sorry, Raven." He whispered. "Me and Cy let it loose… and it got you first… and… _and_…" he was in tears, and she grabbed both of his shoulders. She pulled him out of the chair and almost nose to nose with her. "Rae…?" he whispered, staring into her purple eyes.

"Kiss me you _idiot_." She said softly. Wrapping her arms around him, she pulled into just that. His eyes bulged for a few moments, but it didn't take long for him to melt into her. She pulled him onto the bed with a soft moan, slipping her tongue into his mouth. A silent, gentle dance took place and when finally the kiss broke… Beast Boy saw he was on top of her. She looked at him with softened eyes, and he embraced her to his chest. Clambering off so that they lay next to each other on her bed, the green teen heaved a great contented sigh. Holding her intimately he absently stroked her hair.

_She told him everything. Everything that had happened to her since he'd seen her last. How she'd gotten sucked into the game. How Titan's Tower had looked so cold and abandoned. How Starfire had committed suicide, and how a doppleganger of him had almost raped her. Cyborg's T-car had even played a role. How she'd seen so many horrible things, including **herself**, in the game. She told him of how Robin had been on the phone, and that she'd completely scanned through his diary to look for clues. Raven even told Beast Boy about the letter to Terra she'd found. _

When she was finished, she looked up at him. "Wow…" he whispered. "That's……"

"_Creepy?_" Raven put in the proper word, actually smiling at him. He smiled back, and she buried her face in his chest. The clock now read close to 5AM.

"Yeah… _creepy_." He said, holding her tightly. She invited him under the covers, curling against him like a lover. He was hesitant, having never slept with someone of the opposite gender before. Sure, he'd had his fair share of sleep-overs before he became a super hero, but still… After a few minutes he relaxed considerably. "Raven… I…" he was summoning up his courage. He was about to say those three small words… "Raven, I–"

"Shut up, BB." Raven used his nickname for the first time in her life. He gaped at her, even though her face wasn't visible. She nuzzled tighter against him, enjoying the blessed warmth of his body. "_I know_…"

"You'll have to tell that story all over again tomorrow, y'know." he whispered, smiling gently.

"What'd I just say?" Raven prodded him in the side. She was trying to sound stern, but failing.

"I know, I know…" he smiled at her lovingly, seeing only the top of her head. He placed a quick kiss there, "_Shut up_." They curled into each other like lovers, sharing the warmth of each other's bodies. Tomorrow would come, yes, but the rain was finally over. It was would be a bright, sunny day. Raven intended to spent every second of it outside, where it was bright and there were no shadows. Also, where she would be with BB. It was always darkest just before dawn. And that dawn was only a few hours away.

_The clock read 'GAME OVER' it bright green neon. The black disk under the couch broke into a thousand pieces._

**THE END**

* * *

_So? What'd you think? Cool, huh? I worked long and hard on this one, so**PLEASE** be sure to leave a review for me. Tell me if you liked it or hated it, if you found something you didn't like or found memorable… (A lot of people thought Starfire shouting "Screw you!" was hilarious, and I got a lot of laughs from that…) Was the romance at the end too much, though? I hope I didn't rush that… did it seem to fit with the story? Just thought I'd ask… All in all, I'm really very proud of this story. And I would like to thank everyone who stayed with me since the beginning._


	16. EPILOGUE

_What's this? **Another part**? But the story's over… Not quite,TT fans! Someone wanted me to do an epilogue, so here I am to serve my readers! Thanks for not flaming about the kind of sudden BB/Rae last part… (smile) I just couldn't resist. Uhm… okay! Here goes… I don't own Teen Titans!_

* * *

Raven's Game

Part 16: **_Epilogue_**

Raven was the first to awaken the next morning. Or, so she thought. She found Beast Boy gone from her bed, and flushed as she sat up. Would he be weird about what they'd done…? Would he brag to the world that he'd snogged with Raven? She flushed a deeper crimson, and a few books jumped off her shelf. That actually made her smile. Her powers were up and working again. She thrust out a hand, easily righting them.

Quickly dressing, Raven made her way down to the common room. What she found was the one thing she'd been wanting for the past three days. A _feast_. Raven's eyes got a little wider than normal as she looked at the spread that was weighing down the counter and table. Not even bothering to look for her herbal teas, she found the cook without too much trouble. Or rather, _cooks_.

"You know Raven doesn't eat tofu eggs!" It was Robin speaking. "I've gotta finish Starfire's hash-browns before she wakes up!" They were both manning the stove, but constantly getting in each other's way. "Move it, Beast Boy!"

"No way, man!" Beast Boy snapped, stirring at what looked like egg and fake bacon. "Raven's gonna love my breakfast bananza and you can't elbow me outta the way!" They rather comically fought back and forth, swatting each other with spatulas, pitching random cooking ingredients at each other.

Raven shook her head, and jumped when someone touched her shoulder. It was Starfire, of course. Both girls watched the boys fight over the stove with some amusement. "Friend Robin has dressed my wound and signed it, see?" Starfire whispered so the boys wouldn't hear them. She pulled down one of the straps of her outfit, showing Raven. Indeed, Starfire's wound had been expertly dressed and medicated. And, in tiny red pen, was the name Robin… _and a little heart drawn next to it_.

"Have fun showing him your _chest_?" Raven said, looking at her sideways. There was no way Robin had cleaned and dressed her wound without getting her shirt off first. Starfire giggled embarassedly, turning pink in the cheeks.

The girlish giggling got the attention of both boys, and they spun around. "Raven!" Beast Boy smiled crookedly, as usual.

"Starfire!" Like BB, Robin was red in the cheeks. "How long have you two been standing there?"

"Long enough." Raven said, a smirk rising on her face. "Are we eating or what?" As though on cue, the timer on the stove dinged.

"_It's done_!" Both boys exclaimed, turning around to their creations. "_Sit_!" They were still speaking in unison, and both girls were ushered to the table.

Ham, eggs, hash-browns, tofu _everything_, milk, juice, waffles, pancakes, a stray muffin… and a container of _mustard_ were on the table. What a _spread_! Everyone helped themselves, and it didn't take Cyborg long to show up either. It was the greatest brunch/social gathering/catch up time the Titans had ever witnessed.

"So? C'mon Raven! Tell us what happened to you." Cyborg said, shoving a mouthful of fried egg into his cheek to speak. He gulped loudly, just a bit of yolk on one side of his lips.

"A lot of _creepy crap_." Raven said. Beast Boy snorted with laughter into his orange juice, but quickly surpressed himself. A black portal opened next to Raven, and she drew out Starfire's purse. The red head stopped her meal, tilting her head.

"Please, why have you taken my feminine baggage into your possession, Raven?" She asked, reaching for the hash-browns. (Robin swelled with pride as she did so, covertly making sure the mustard was close enough that she could reach it.) "Surely you could find a purse more… ah… fitting to yourself?" She sweat-dropped, but Raven shook her head.

"It was the only one around." Raven said. She reached within, and drew out Starfire's golden locket. She let out a little shriek when she saw it, making a grab for it. Raven let her take it, but when she made to put it on and hide it under her shirt, she was met with a surprise.

"I am wearing my locket…" Starfire said slowly, seeing a little golden chain was already around her neck. Nestled between her modest breasts was the _same locket_. "And… _holding it as well_?"

"All the items I picked up in the game followed me here. Some kind of weird reward for winning, I guess." Raven shrugged. She could tell all the others but Beast Boy were confused. So, she began to explain. She told them just about everything she'd told Beast Boy. She left out a few details, like Beast Boy's letters that proclaimed his love, and seeing herself hanging in the attic. They ate quietly, paying really close attention. She only told parts of Beast Boy's diary, and made sure to glare down anyone who made fun of the fact that he had one. If not for her finding it, she wouldn't have known what to do… "And before I could say the last lyric, it threw me back into the real world." she finished at last.

The others had long finished eating, but no one had dared to leave the table for fear of missing part of the story. "…_whoa_." Robin said. "How…. you…" he couldn't seem to string a sentence together.

Raven reached and emptied the purse, one item at a time. The diary. The flashlight. The magnifying glass. The screwdriver. The glass red eye-patch. One of Robin's utility belts. And, of course, Starfire's locket. "I had all of you with me. The whole time." Raven said, gesturing to each special item and the corresponding owner. Cyborg's 'red eye.' Starfire's locket. Beast Boy's diary. Robin's utility belt. "You all helped me, whether you were there or not. But… especially _you_, Beast Boy." The green teen flushed at his crush's exclusive attention. "In the worst case scenario, you were the biggest hero of us all. Hiding each symbol and leaving puzzles behind to help me find them." She said it all in her monotone, but her powers made her hood fall back so everyone could see her eyes. They were shining with a bridled sort of excitement only found when they saw her reading one of her favorite novels.

"That's… a lot to swallow, Raven." Robin said. "I wanna apologize to everybody, though." He stared at his plate, looking guilty. "Even in the game I didn't believe you guys about the shadow-thing." He paused awkwardly, but pressed on. "At least here in the real world I didn't screw up _as_ badly."

"You ain't the type to go on a ghost hunt, man." Cyborg slapped his back in a brotherly manner, grinning. "You would'a just got in the way." Robin looked at him sideways, not sure of what to make of that comment.

Raven stood at last, offering Starfire the purse. "No, friend. You must save all of these strange items as a keepsake. " she pushed it back towards Raven. "Besides–" Starfire turned her head. "My purse is over there as well." Sure enough, Starfire's bright pink purse was lying on the counter. The one Raven had was torn, had blood and grime on it, and was really faded.

"Yeah, Star's right. "Robin pushed the utility belt back in Raven's direction.

"You've earned all this stuff." Cyborg shoved the glass eye-patch back over to her.

"It's _yours_." Beast Boy knew that _this_ version of his diary was blank, but it still felt really personal giving it to her. But… he didn't mind anymore. She could see what he thought of the world. All the closer he could feel to _her_.

"Thanks…" Raven said. "But, there's one more thing…" she left the table and went to the common room's living area. She peered carefully around. She'd spent the last three days searching for symbols, so… "_There_." Raven lifted the couch with her powers and set it down to one side. She stared at the mysterious disk, for it was in a million pieces. There was a long silence, and all the Titans came to see.

"The one place we didn't look…" Robin felt stupid, as did the others. The common room had been their base of operations for trying to find Raven. So, of course they hadn't searched _that_ room! Especially under the couch…

"_Cyborg_." Raven looked at him sharply, gathering the pieces of the disk with her powers. "I've got a little project for you." she looked at him from under her eyebrows. "_Beast Boy_? Go get all your black crayons. You've got a job to do."

All four Titans stared at her, wondering what she had in mind.

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Raven had told them all her plan, and it was immiediatly agreed upon.

_Another seal must be forged_, she'd said. Cyborg had broken the first one with his cork-screw drill, and it had been made of a giant stone slab. So, they needed to upgrade it. Going down there, unafraid because the darkness was sealed away, they'd cleared the rubble out with Starfire's help. Robin and Cyborg made the proper measurements for space and materials… and a giant metal seal was under construction. It looked like a giant coin, standing up on its rim. This one was implanted into the rock, though, so it wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon. Making sure it was thick enough for all purposes, waterproof, airtight and sealed shut… Cyborg's job was done. That left Beast Boy time to go crazy drawing binding symbol's all around the edges, and the main twelve near the center. Writing a message in clear English, Beast Boy composed it himself:

_**CAUTION**: Stay Out. There is a monster inside._

That was it. That was the best he could come up with. But hey, it got the message across. Beast Boy scribbled a few cave-drawing renders of the shadow-thing, and lots of mean eyes everywhere. Getting down off of his step ladder, he gestured to Raven that he was done. He'd drawn all the symbols in crayon, as hard as he could, and now it was her turn.

Raven gestured with both arms and her powers took over. They flowed into the giant metal seal, taking over its make up. The black glow of her magic infused itself with every single binding symbol Beast Boy had spent hours drawing. The twelve recitation symbols glittered with a gothic, silvery sheen. They pulsed in harmony, casting a soft glow across them. Making sure to write the lyric of each symbol in big, bold lettering, Raven stepped back. "Done." She said, admiring their handiwork.

"Almost done." Robin said, stepping out of shadow with Starfire. Raven, Cyborg and Beast Boy watched them approach. Starfire lifted Robin up, flying to the exact center of the seal. Robin took something out and placed it there, right in the middle. It was the emblem "T". T stood for Titans, they all knew. "One last thing, though. Cyborg…?" Robin gestured as he was lowered to the ground again.

"Yeah." Cyborg stepped forward, his hand becoming a blow torch. He melted part of the seal, spelling something out… it was that day's date! "That'll tell everybody how long its been here, and that it's gotta stay here." The metal man stepped back when his work was done.

The group of five stepped back, admiring what they'd done. "Hey Raven?" Beast Boy said. She looked at him from under her hood. He was gonna try saying those three small words again…

"I know, BB. I know." she offered a shy smile, letting his hand slip into hers as they turned to leave. Robin did the same with Starfire, leaving Cyborg staring at them in dumbfounded disbelief.

"Aw c'mon, man! I wasn't out of power _that long_ was I?" He demanded, giving chase. "You gotta keep me in the loop on these things, ya'll! Are ya'll even listening? Hey!" He gave chase, leaving the seal behind him. And there the seal would hopefully stand for many, many years. Holding back the darkness and keeping out trespassers…

…_until it was time to play another game._

* * *

_Yay for me! Epilogues are fun! OH OH **OH**! STAY TUNED FOR THE **BLOOPER REEL**! I LOVE BLOOPERS! I won't take long to make them up, so come back soon! Bye!_


	17. BlOoPeR rEeL!

_And now for the blooper reel! Do you like bloopers? Every time I find a movie with bloopers, I ALWAYS watch them, just because they're so funny. Yay! Bloopers are usually in movies, a collection of mishaps or mess-ups in the acting on set. I got a request from a few people to do some for this story, so here I go!_

* * *

Raven's Game

Part : **_BLOOPER REEL_**

**Beast Boy looks through the mail**

Beast Boy came back a minute later with a hand full of mail. "Let's see…" He thumbed through the envelopes. "Robin… Robin… Cy's PC Monthly… **_Playboy_**?" he stared and a grin worked his way across his face. "Addressed to… STARFIRE?" He dropped it and Raven started laughing. Everyone on set started laughing, Starfire among them.

"April the fool, Beast Boy!" Starfire giggled.

**Beast Boy's Sandwich **

After helping himself to a peanut butter, pickle, banana, and jelly sandwich, Beast Boy made his way to leave the common room. When he reached the threshold or the elevator he tripped over his own feet with a cry, falling face first. Sandwich pieces went everywhere! People behind the camera started laughing. "Dude! That is _not_ funny!" Beast Boy said, red in the cheeks as he feebly gathered his sandwich again.

**Raven puts her name into the Game **

The little underscore was blinking. It was hovering at about face-level, word and all. Raven touched it, but she didn't feel anything. It was just light. There was no projector anywhere, either. It was simply hanging in the air. "Uh…?" she thought for a moment. "Raven Arella Trigon destroy-the-world-half-demon the third." She spoke her full name. There was a long silence.

"Uhm… can she do that?" said one camera guy.

"The special effects department is gonna kill her." The director mumbled. "Let's try that one again, okay Raven?"

**Beast Boy on the Answering Machine **

It was… an _end table_. It was small and had, of all things, an answering machine on it. "If you're there pick up, Raven!" She knew the voice immiediatly. It was _Beast Boy_! "It's me, Beast Boy!" There was a pause. Raven wondered how she was supposed to pick up… _if there was no phone around._ His voice lowered to a whisper, "_I know what you did last summer, Raven._" He started giggling. Raven snorted with laughter, rolling her eyes.

**Raven entering the Tower in the game **

Both doors burst open, throwing her backward like a rag doll. Raven landed with a cry, quickly standing to face her attacker. But… there was no one there. It was dark beyond dark inside, and even Raven's eyes couldn't pierce the blackness. She quickly approached the doorway, peering inside. "Mmm…" she mumbled, unsure of herself.

Suddenly a massive, horrid screeching blasted out of the building! "IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL! IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL!" Raven started laughing as the song played full blast from the shadows.

"Who the hell's been messing with sound effects?" The director demanded.

**Beast Boy is ready to sniff out Raven **

Robin wasn't worried about Raven, but Beast Boy spoke up again. "But the last time I saw her, she was making tea!" he said, growing frustrated with Robin's lack of interest. "She wouldn't go out in a storm like _this_ to go do something she was doing here in the first place!" Beast Boy suddenly turned into a green dog, ready to track her down. He turned back into a human suddenly, speaking again. "I need a lock of her hair, or a scrap of her clothes, or a pair of her panties or –" Raven appeared out of nowhere and smacked the back of his head! "Hey! You aren't in this scene!" he yelped, rubbing the back of his head.

The director rolled his eyes.

**Raven Empties Starfire's Purse **

Raven unzipped all the zippers and turned it upside down. Money, make up, some playing cards, a picture of Robin, and some ticket stubs fell out. She looked inside to see if there was anything else inside… and found a _condom_. Staring in absolute disbelief, she found "For Friend Robin" written on it with pink ink, and a little heart drawn next to it. Raven tried to surpress her laughter, but just couldn't. She leaned on the counter, laughing so hard that tears rolled down her cheeks.

**The Giant Shadow Hand **

The invisible whispering shadow was coming back for her! Raven looked on fearfully as the terrible black, smoky substance started rising. It was taking shape. Oh God, it was taking _shape_. The smoke started forming into huge, clawed hand. It was big enough to crush a person like a _twig_. Raven let out a terrified scream, and… _the giant hand flicked her the birdie_! Raven's mouth fell open and she doubled over laughing.

**Where has our friend gone to? **

Robin, Beast Boy and Starfire looked in all directions. "Where has our friend gone to?" Starfire whispered. "She is not in this morbid place, and Beast Boy thinks she would not brave the storm… then where would she be?"

"I'm right here." Raven was right behind her.

"_EEEK_!" Starfire jumped into Robin's arms. Everyone but her laughed.

**Cyborg's Car **

The car whirred to life, startling Raven and making her instinctively grab the steering wheel. She looked down at the control stick and found it set on reverse. Raven screamed as the care revved backwards and slammed into the wall! She staggered of the now smoking vehicle, her eyes in swirls. "My _baby_!" Cyborg ran on set, throwing his arms as best he could around his car. "My poor baby!" He wept for his vehicle.

**Beast Boy in the Vent **

Beast Boy was a mouse, given the job to search the ventilation shaft. Surely Raven wasn't hiding _there_, but Robin said search everywhere. But, was she _hiding_? If she'd left the tower, their entire search would've been pointless, but… she would've left some signs of a hasty departure. And, so far, none had been found. Not a scrap of her clothes… or a lock of hair… or _anything_. Beast Boy's little black mouse nose wiggled. He was starting to get really worried. Suddenly Raven jumped out of nowhere! "BOOGA BOOGA _BOOGA_!"

The mouse Beast Boy squeaked in terror! Everyone else on set laughed.

**Raven in Starfire's Room **

Raven heaved a troubled sigh, placing a hand on one of the blast marks. She leaned on it for a moment, and she heard the wall groan in protest. It was barely holding up. The last thing she needed was a cave in… Quickly standing straight again, Raven began her search of the room itself.

She gasped when she got a better look at one of the walls. A skimpy, hard leather outfit was hanging on a hanger there, whip and all! Raven stared, shocked and horrified. Everyone behind camera started laughing, "April the fool, Raven!" Starfire giggled, apparently enjoying her own perverted jokes.

**Scratchings on Starfire's Wall **

Raven peered closely, but couldn't make them out. Getting the flashlight out of the purse she'd borrowed from the Tameranian princess, she angled it so that the scratches had shadows in them and were thusly readable.

_I love Raven_

Raven fell down anime style, and everyone on set laughed.

**Raven's crying scene **

"Oh Beast Boy…" she whispered, weeping softly. She drew her legs up to her chest as she crouched in the corner. "I _tried_…" There was a short silence, and a green hand held a tissue out to her. "What the…?" She took it, looking up to see the green changling. "You aren't in this scene, y'know." Raven stood, clonking Beast Boy over the head.

"I was just bringin' the tissue, jeez!" He complained, rubbing the back of his head. "A guy tries to help, and gets smacked over the head for it…" He stalked away, mock-offended.

**Screw you? **

She could find no words in Tameranian that could express her anger, and a sudden memory broke into her mind. Beast Boy had shouted it at her when his anger had jumped to new heights. The normally peaceful red head took a deep, angry breath and – "**SCREW YOU**!" she screamed in anguish. Robin burst into laughter, as did everyone on set.

**Screw you? TAKE 2**

She could find no words in Tameranian that could express her anger, and a sudden memory broke into her mind. Beast Boy had shouted it at her when his anger had jumped to new heights. The normally peaceful red head took a deep, angry breath and – "**SCREW YOU**!" she screamed in anguish, taking him by the collar. Robin giggled helplessly.

**Screw you? TAKE 3 **

She could find no words in Tameranian that could express her anger, and a sudden memory broke into her mind. Beast Boy had shouted it at her when his anger had jumped to new heights. The normally peaceful red head took a deep, angry breath and – "**SCREW YOU**!" she screamed in anguish. Starfire cracked a sudden grin, holding her sides with laughter. "You have a boogie hanging out, friend Robin!" She pointed. Robin flushed red, calling for a tissue.

"Oh for the love of…" the director groaned.

**Screw you? TAKE 4 **

She could find no words in Tameranian that could express her anger, and a sudden memory broke into her mind. Beast Boy had shouted it at her when his anger had jumped to new heights. The normally peaceful red head took a deep, angry breath and – "**SCREW YOU**!" she screamed in anguish. Robin tried hard not to smile, but he just couldn't help it. "Do _not_ smile!" Starfire shouted. "We shall be doing this scene _all day_!"

**Screw you? TAKE 5 **

She could find no words in Tameranian that could express her anger, and a sudden memory broke into her mind. Beast Boy had shouted it at her when his anger had jumped to new heights. The normally peaceful red head took a deep, angry breath and – "**SCREW YOU**!" she screamed in anguish.

"**SCREW YOU TOO**!" Robin rather comically shouted, trying not to laugh. Starfire suddenly looked very meek, tears forming in her eyes. She ran away crying and Robin looked horrified. "Wait! Starfire! _Come back_! It's just _acting_! _Starfire_!"

**Raven answers the phone for the second time **

. Just as she was about to exit the common room, the phone rang. Raven jumped, then turned with a growl. More tricks and foolery? Stomping over the phone, she picked it up, "It's not like you to pull the same trick twice, whatever the hell you are." She said, grinning from under her eyebrows. "What is it this time?" What Raven heard on the other end of the line wasn't anywhere near what she expected.

_"Raven's the coolest…"_

_"Can I have your autograph, **please**…"_

_"Raven save us from the dark…"_

_"I can't see my hand in front of my face…"_

_"Who's there…? Gee willikers! Is that you, Jimmy-Bob?"_

"_And by the power invested in me I now pronounce you_…" 

_"…For I am like the fart, **silent**… but **deadly**."_

**END OF BLOOPER REEL Oo**

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_And… that's truly all, folks! I will make no more additions to this story. It's really over now. The darkness was sealed away, a new seal forged, and the game is over. What will happen between Raven and Beast Boy, if anything? Did Starfire actually show Robin her chest? And will Cyborg ever feel like he's "back in the loop?" …I dunno, so don't ask me. This is the author Will-the-Titan, **signing off.**_

**P.S. Please remember this story was based off of a PC video game, DARK FALL: THE JOURNAL. **If you liked the story, you might like the game! YAY!

**_UPCOMING STORY: _**OMG! _OMG_! **_OMG_**! There's a sequel to this story coming up! You wanna read it? I'll have parts one and two up soon, so keep a look out! "DARK FALL: THE JOURNAL" has a sequel as well… a game called **_LIGHTS OUT_**. The new story will be called "**_Beast Boy's Game_**!" How creative of a title is _that_? LOL!

**Story Advertisement **(_last_ advertisement, I promise. But, please read it.): If you liked "Raven's Game," then you might like another one of my stories. Its called "**_SHADE_**." A shadowy antihero has taken a liking to Raven, taunting her with riddles and… _flirtation_? It's complete, so go read the whole thing if you want! Mystery/Romance of **_Raven_** and an **_OC_**! _Huzzah_!


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